Józef Hecht (Łódź, 14 December 1891 – Paris, 19 June 1951), also known as Joseph Hecht, was a printmaker and painter born in Poland who made Paris his base from 1920. Trained in classical copper-engraving techniques, he is best remembered as a founder of the Atelier 17 printmaking studio, whose influence reached many 20th-century printmakers.
Hecht studied at the Kraków Art Academy from 1909 to 1914 and then visited museums across Europe. He was in Berlin when World War I broke out and, thanks to his studies in the Austrian zone of Poland and prizes won in Paris, was able to move to neutral Norway, where he lived from 1914 to 1919. After the armistice he went to Italy and in 1920 settled in Paris, where he joined the Salon d'Automne.
In 1926 he published the suite L'Arche de Noë, with a preface by Gustave Kahn, and in 1928 the folio Atlas, made with André Suarès. In 1927 he encouraged Stanley William Hayter to found Atelier 17, and in 1929 he became a founding member of La Jeune Gravure Contemporaine. He won two gold medals at the 1937 Paris World's Fair. Of Jewish descent, he withdrew to the Savoy region during the war and worked as a farm labourer. After the war, encouraged by Hayter, he returned to engraving and developed new methods of relief printing.
His legacy lies largely in his teaching and in the collaborative spirit he gave printmaking, and his work is held in many public collections.