Hans Hofmann 2880-1966

Hans Hofmann was a Color Field painter from Weißenburg, Germany. At the age of sixteen, Hofmann developed great strengths in math and science through his work with the director of Public Works in the Bavarian government. They patented and produced electromagnetic comptometers, radar devices for ships at sea, sensitized light bulbs and portable freezer units for military use. After the death of his father, Hofmann became interested in the arts, beginning his studies in Paris before World War I. His style was influenced by Pablo Picasso’s Cubism, Fauvism and Expressionistic energy. Hofmann once said, "The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color."

In 1932, he moved to the U.S. and completed his famous series of abstract paintings in the 1940s. Hofmann’s style maintained the flatness of the canvas, but he used color to create forms and texture. Hofmann said, "the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." He also taught art and had many successful students as Helen Frankenthaler, Allan Kaprow and Lee Krasner. Clement Greenberg, who was a great supporter of Hofmann's ideas, claimed he was "in all probability the most important art teacher of our time." Hofmann‘s highest auction record was reached in 2013 with the sale of his Beatae Memoriae (1964) for $4.2 million.

Hofmann’s work is featured in various permanent collections including the UC Berkeley Art Museum, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, the MoMA in New York, the San Francisco MoMA, Boston's MFA, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Seattle Art Museum, the Dayton Art Institute, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Delaware Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, the Museu d'Art Contemporani in Barcelona, the Tate Gallery  in London and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

Related Categories: Color Field Painting, New York School, Abstract Expressionism, Post-War American Art, Abstract Painting, Color Theory, Line, Form and Color, Painting, Nature, Landscape, Large Brushstrokes/Loose Brushwork, United States, Primary Abstraction, Germany, Work on Paper.