Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmannwas a German-born American abstract expressionist painter...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth21 March 1880
CountryGermany
attitude healing optimism
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.
ideas function
A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.
wall squares ideas
The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space.
dark light color
Depth, in a pictorial, plastic sense, is not created by the arrangement of objects one after another toward a vanishing point, in the sense of the Renaissance perspective, but on the contrary (and in absolute denial of this doctrine) by the creation of forces in the sense of push and pull . Nor is depth created by tonal gradation (another doctrine of the academician which, at its culmination, degraded the use of color to a mere function of expressing dark and light).
art spring reality
Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus not imitation. ... From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life all movement and rhythm time and light, color and mood in short, all reality in Form and Thought.
expression order ideas
An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea
art finals realization
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
art goes-on principles
What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation.
illustration two lines
A work based only on a line concept is scarcely more than a illustration; it fails to achieve pictorial structure. Pictorial structure is based on a plane concept. The line originates in the meeting of two planes ... we can lose ourselves in a multitude of lines, if through them we lose our senses for the planes.
art spirit glorification
To me, art is the glorification of the human spirit.
men two people
People say 'Hofmann has different styles'. I have not. I have different moods; I am not two days the same man.
law differences expression
It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws
art expression profound
Art and science create a balance to material life and enlarge the world of living experience. Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling.
color differences light
Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light.