Hans Hofmann
Overview
 
Hans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 painter.
Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

 on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich. Here his father took a job with the government.

Starting at a young age, Hofmann gravitated towards science and mathematics. At age sixteen, he started work with the Bavarian government as assistant to the director of Public Works where he was able to increase his knowledge of mathematics.
Quotations

To sense the invisible and to be able to create it — that is art.

Statement of 1950, as quoted in Hans Hofmann (1998) by Helmut Friedel and Tina Dickey

There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations.

"A Statement by Hans Hoffman" in Hans Hofmann : Recent Paintings (1952) Kootz Gallery

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.

"Charles Webster Hawthorne|Hawthorne — the Painter : An Appreciation" (1952)

It isn’t necessary to make things large to make them monumental; a head by Alberto Giacometti|Giacometti one inch high would be able to vitalize this whole space.

As quoted in Can Painting be Taught by Dorothy Seckler, Art News No. 50 (March 1951), p. 64

As a teacher I approach my students purely with the human desire to free them from all scholarly inhibitions, and I tell them, "Painters must speak through paint — not through words."

As quoted in It ls., No. 3 (Winter-Spring 1959)

Basically I hate categorical labels. As a young artist I already was very clear about this — that "objectification" is not the final aim of art. For there are greater things than the object. The greatest thing is the human mind.

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 118

 
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