Hans Hofmann 1880-1966
“In nature, light creates the color; in the picture, color creates light.”
Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) was a painter and teacher whose work bridged European modernism and American Abstract Expressionism. Born in Weissenburg, Bavaria, he studied painting in Munich from 1898, meeting members of the Blaue Reiter group, including Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. From 1904 he lived in Paris, where he became acquainted with Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, absorbing Cubism and Fauvism before returning to Munich at the outbreak of World War I.
In 1932 Hofmann moved to New York, teaching at the Art Students League before opening the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, first in New York and later in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Known as an influential teacher, he emphasized the creative use of color and form, encouraging students such as Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler to develop independent voices.
Originally a figurative painter, Hofmann turned fully to abstraction in the late 1930s. His work explored the tension between structure and spontaneity, from the dense surfaces of the 1940s to the radiant, simplified “slab” compositions of the 1950s and 1960s. A 1963 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art traveled widely in the United States and Europe, securing his international recognition.
Hofmann’s work is represented in major public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Tate, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Städel Museum, Frankfurt; and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.
