INTERESTED IN A FINE PRINT OR OTHER MEDIA POSSIBILITIES?   CONTACT paul@vphotoestate.com

Irwind D. Hoffman (1901-1989)was a major etcher and painter in the 1930's.  (See below for a fuller description.) He and his artistic partner Andrew Karoly lived across the hallway from my father, photographer Walter Verizzo.  Mr. Hoffman preferred to paint from prints instead of a live model.  My father would "shoot" the model, Mr. Hoffman would paint, and then my father would often take pictures of the finished results.  (My father says that Mr. Karoly had a prostitute come over once a week.  Mr. Hoffman would leave for a beer.)
 
The mural pictures were taken at the World's Fair, my father claims.  He is the man in VER1347.

Irwin Hoffman had a long career and published a book through the Boston Public Library in 1980. Google his name and you can learn a lot more about him!

From Art of the Print :
"Irwin D. Hoffman: A major American etcher and painter of the 1930's and 1940's, Irwin D. Hoffman studied at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While still in his teens, he was awarded the Page Traveling Scholarship and completed his studies abroad in France, Italy, Russia and Holland. Upon returning to America, Hoffman first gained national recognition for his etchings of miners, factory labourers and other men at work. During the 1930's, Irwin Hoffman devoted much of his artistic talents to the portrayal of life in Latin America. He first spent much time in Mexico where he studied the murals and graphic art of Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. Later in the decade he concentrated upon studies of the peasant life in Puerto Rico. This original etching dates from this time. Whether portraying working life and labour in the United States or the arduous existence of life in Latin America, one is always struck with both the sympathy and veracity of Hoffman's original etchings. Unlike many 'social' artists of the period, Hoffman actually lived and worked with the peoples he portrayed. In part, this helps to explain why his fine etchings are so highly regarded today.  In the years 1938 and 1939 Hoffman was commissioned at least three times to contribute original etchings to the Associated American Artists in New York."