PRESS RELEASE

Allen Hirsch has watched sunsets and blizzards but also major events such as 9/11, Hurricane Sandy and most recently the COVID-19 shutdown through his loft window overlooking Lafayette Street at the intersection of Soho, Nolita, Chinatown and Little Italy. He has painted hundreds of canvases of this view, showing New York’s changing character, resilience and renewal.

YCG Fine Art now presents twelve of these works in a special exhibition honoring this New York artist who has painted both daily occurrences and epic events in the city over the past 25 years. As with great art documenting the past, Hirsch hopes these pictures will live on as a historical record for generations to come.

The artist is also a real estate developer who helped change this view, putting in one of the first and now most popular restaurants in the area, La Esquina. Many other businesses soon followed and this triangle became one of the most sought-out neighborhoods in NYC. Regarding the view now emptied due to the pandemic, Hirsch reflects: “Many left the city, but this was a unique event in our history to experience. As an inhabitant and participant in our great metropolis, I live to capture in paint both its external and internal transformations. I’m inspired now to see the streets and restaurants coming to life again; a good harbinger of NYC’s future.”

DONATION

Allen Hirsch and YCG FINE ART will donate part of the proceeds of ALLEN HIRSCH: UP LAFAYETTE STREET to CITY HARVEST, New York’s largest food rescue organization, feeding over 1.5 million locals a year, a cause all the more crucial given the current pandemic.