Allen Hirsch

(Los Angeles, b. 1959)

Allen Hirsch is an internationally acclaimed artist, entrepreneur, writer and inventor. Hirsch created several well-known covers for TIME magazine, including Muammar Qaddafi (1986), Rajiv Ghandi(1991), and Drugs: The Enemy Within (1986), and in 1993, was invited to paint President Bill Clinton’s inaugural portrait for the National Portrait Gallery. His numerous awards include the Hitchcock Award for landscape painting from the National Gallery. Hirsch is also the founder of famed “La Esquina” restaurant in Nolita, and the inventor of HANDL, an ergonomic device for holding mobile phones. HANDL, and more broadly technology as a subject and medium, have played an important role in his recent art. Hirsch’s extraordinary relationship with a capuchin monkey he rescued was the subject of a New York Times Emmy-winning documentary entitled Long Live Benjamin (2018). A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Hirsch is currently working on a book about Dutch artist, Pieter de Hooch.

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