Hans Hofmann was a famous German-born American painter and art teacher associated with the Abstraction Expressionism art movement. He is best known for his abstract expressionist paintings dealing with color relationships, shapes, texture and paint. Famous Hans Hofmann artworks include “Pompeii”, “Auxerre”, “The Gate”, “The Golden Wall”, “Deep Within the Ravine”, “The Conjurer”, “Lust and Delight”, “Rising Moon”, “Renate’s Nantucket” and “Morning Mist”.
Mini biography: Born Hans Hofmann on the 21st of March, 1880 in Weißenburg, Germany. His mother was Franziska Manger and his father Theodor Friedrich Hofmann was a government employee. Hofmann married Maria Wolfegg in 1924 until her death in 1963. He married his second wife Renate Schmitz in 1965. The artist died on the 17th of February, 1966 in New York City, NY, United States of America at the age of 85. Hans Hofmann is buried at the Snow Cemetery, Truro, Massachusetts, United States.
List of Famous Hans Hofmann Art Quotes
Painters must speak through paint, not through words. Hans Hofmann
It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form. Hans Hofmann
Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling. The artist is born, and art is the expression of his overflowing soul. Because his soul is rich, he cares comparatively little about the superficial necessities of the material world; he sublimates the pressure of material affairs in an artistic experience. Hans Hofmann
In nature, light creates the color; in the picture, color creates light. Every color shade emanates a very characteristic light.. no substitute is possible. Hans Hofmann
The art of pictorial creation is so complicated.. it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization. Hans Hofmann
When I paint, I paint under the dictate of feeling or sensing, and the outcome all the time is supposed to say something. Hans Hofmann
The reciprocal relation of color to color produces a phenomenon of a more mysterious order. This new phenomenon is psychological. A high sensitivity is necessary in order to expand color into the sphere of the surreal without losing creative ground. Color stimulates certain moods in us. It awakens joy or fear in accordance with its figuration. In fact, the whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color. Our entire being is nourished by it. This mystic quality of color should likewise find expression in a work of art. Hans Hofmann
Through a painting we can see the whole world. Hans Hofmann
Art is to me the glorification of the human spirit, and as such it is the cultural documentation of the time in which it is produced. Hans Hofmann
A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist’s world. Hans Hofmann
Art is magic. So say the surrealists. But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic. To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction. Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects. Hans Hofmann
I can’t understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism. Despite the general pessimistic attitude in the world today, I am nothing but an optimist. Hans Hofmann
The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color. Hans Hofmann
To sense the invisible and to be able to create it.. that is art. Hans Hofmann
A thought that has found a plastic expression must continue to expand in keeping with its own plastic idiom. A plastic idea must be expressed with plastic means just as a musical idea is expressed with musical means, or a literary idea with verbal means. Neither music nor literature are wholly translatable into other art forms; and so a plastic art cannot be created through a superimposed literary meaning. The artist who attempts to do so produces nothing more than a show-booth. He contents himself with visual story-telling. He subjects himself to a mechanistic kind of thinking which disintegrates into fragments. Hans Hofmann
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. Hans Hofmann
There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations. Hans Hofmann
My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature. Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann Abstract Painting
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Related or similar popular artists and celebrities include: Robert Motherwell || Jackson Pollock || Gerhard Richter || Georg Baselitz, and other Famous German Painters.
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