Biography of Hans Hofmann, Abstract Expressionism Pioneer

Summer Night’s Bliss (1961) is a storm of smoldering color, patches of raspberry, mustard, and rose diving amid black and brown clouds. It’s exemplary of Hofmann’s “push-pull” technique, where the interplay of colors and shapes creates the illusion of space and movement. Meanwhile, Delirious Pink (1961) is a white canvas adorned with just a few fast, almost slapdash, bursts of color. The spirit is joyous and triumphant, but the breezy insouciance of Michael Krebber stands not far off. Hofmann’s first wife, Miz, was a constant support and companion to him for almost 60 years, and after her death he painted this vibrant canvas as a memorial.

The painting ”Self-Portrait with Brushes”(1942) is typical Artist Hans Hofmann of his style at this time. Its fame soon spread internationally and his first visit to the United States, in 1930, was occasioned by an invitation from a former student, Worth Ryder, to teach a summer session at UC Berkeley. He visited again, and then on his third visit, with political tensions rising in Europe, Hofmann decided to stay and began teaching in New York at the Art Students League. He opened the “Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts” in 1933, and two years later opened a summer school in Provincetown, MA.

He also began to explore a wider variety of styles, and Ecstasy reflects his experiments, showing his continued loyalty to European masters such as Joan Miro and Hans Arp at a time when many of Hofmann’s American colleagues were trying to overcome European influences. In 1957, the Whitney Museum put up a large retrospective on Hofmann, which traveled to seven additional museums in the United States over the next year. The Addison Gallery of American Art holds a large retrospective exhibition from 2 January through 23 February.

Hofmann’s family hoped that he would develop his promise in science, but by the time he had turned eighteen he had decided to pursue art and enrolled in Moritz Heymann’s art school in Munich, where he was introduced to styles such as Impressionism and Pointillism. Soon after, he met a patron who enabled him to support himself as an artist in Paris. Around this time he also met Maria (“Miz”) Wolfegg (his 1902 portrait of her represents an early example of the influence of Impressionism on his work). The couple would not marry until 1924, but she accompanied him to Paris in 1904 and they would remain there until 1914. Hofmann was on a visit to Germany when war broke out that year, and he was unable to return to Paris to salvage his pictures, which were all lost.

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Advancing the language of Piet Mondrian, they’re also transitive paintings, avant la lettre. Painted at the dawn of the television age, they look like so many proliferating screens. Plenty of successful artists spend a lifetime fixated on one visual idea. Hans Hofmann was the exact opposite, rethinking his art and rethinking it again, bobbing and weaving for decades. Along the way, he inspired countless essential artists, remade his life after fleeing oppression, and produced some of the 20th-century’s most scintillating, most prescient paintings. A German American, Hofmann was a leading Abstract Expressionist painter and was considered to be one of the greatest twentieth century teachers.

Useful Resources on Hans Hofmann

Hofmann’s family hoped that he would develop his talents in science, but by the time he had turned eighteen he had decided to pursue art and enrolled in Moritz Heymann’s art school in Munich, where he was fascinated with Impressionists. Around this time the artist met Maria (“Miz”) Wolfegg (his 1902 portrait of her represents an early example of the influence of Impressionism on his work). He claimed that art could be given its voice by distilling it to its basics and removing unnecessary material. Among his prominent pieces was “The Wind.” For years, many historians believed that seeing paintings like it was a key influence on Jackson Pollock’s development of the “drip” painting technique.

Only in this way could an artist stay true to the fundamental fact of the canvas, its two-dimensionality. Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) is one of the most important figures of American art in the 20th century. Celebrated for his exuberant, color-filled canvases, and renowned as an influential teacher for generations of artists, Hofmann became famous first in his native Germany, then in New York and Provincetown.

• To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Art Students League holds a large group exhibition, 7–28 February, and includes an oil painting by Hofmann.
• Much of the work Hofmann exhibited in that show was conservative in comparison to some of the advanced painting then being created by other artists in Guggenheim’s stable; Self-Portrait with Brushes (1942) is typical of his style at this time.
• Hofmann’s family hoped that he would develop his talents in science, but by the time he had turned eighteen he had decided to pursue art and enrolled in Moritz Heymann’s art school in Munich, where he was fascinated with Impressionists.

In the early 1950s, Hofmann’s pictures became richer in feel, and using thick impasto with surfaces built up in layers and rectangular forms floating on areas of saturated color. Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but also as a teacher of art, both in his native Germany and later in the U.S. Hofmann’s work as a teacher, his emigration from Europe, and his singular style all contributed to his late recognition as a major painter. A retrospective of his work was organized by Clement at Bennington College in 1955. Along with Philip Guston and Franz Kline, Hofmann represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1960. And in 1963, the Museum of Modern hosted a retrospective of his work that toured the world.

In the spring, just a few months after opening her Art of This Century gallery in New York at 30 West 57th Street, American art collector Peggy Guggenheim views Hofmann’s paintings in his studio on 44 East 8th Street. Soon after her visit, which had been orchestrated by Krasner, Guggenheim begins organizing what would be Hofmann’s first solo exhibition in New York the following year. The late “slab” paintings, Hofmann’s most famous works (rightly so), are especially potent now.