Hans Hofmann: Revised and Expanded
by Sam Hunter
from Rizzoli International Publications
This book is the only comprehensive treatment of one of Abstract Expressionism's most important forefathers: Hans Hofmann. Hans Hofmann attends to every stage of his prolific career. Nearly 300 gorgeous color plates reveal this modern master's extraordinary sense of color: beautifully vibrant greens, rich blues and brilliant reds organized in strikingly powerful patterns. Sam Hunter, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, writes a substantive essay on every aspect of Hofmann's distinguished body of work. Five important essays by the artist himself are included, revealing his philosophy of art which was so influential to the generations that followed him. Frank Stella, an important painter who deeply admired his work, also contributes an essay.
Hans Hofmann
by Karen Wilkin
from George Braziller
Hans Hofmann's art "has the authority of pure vision. Van Gogh had that. Picasso has it. And Hans Hofmann also has a place with those giants who move straight into the light without being blinded by it."—Tennessee Williams, 1949
The painter Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) is one of the most important figures in post-war American art. In his lifetime, he came to be admired for his exuberant, color-filled canvases, but it was as an influential teacher, first in his native Germany, later in New York and Provincetown, that he was most renowned. Today, he is celebrated a giant of twentieth-century abstraction, and his pivotal role, along with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Arshile Gorky, in the development of Abstract Expressionism is widely acknowledged. Published to accompany a retrospective of the artist's work at the Naples Museum of Art, Florida, Hans Hofmann examines the full range of his achievement and influence as both artist and theorist.
As a painter, Hofmann was distinguished by his ability to create expressive drama and evocative space with contrasts of intense color, richly modulated surfaces, and a vocabulary of shapes ranging from the geometric to the calligraphic. As a teacher, he brought to America first-hand knowledge of the work of such European modernists as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, who he met as a young man studying in Paris, during the early years of twentieth-century modernism. As a theorist, he developed an original philosophy of what a work of art could be, which formed the basis of his teaching, lectures, and essays. One of these statements, about the role of color in painting, is included in Hans Hofmann. More than sixty paintings highlight key stages of Hofmann's career, with a generous representation of works from the late flowering of his last decades, when he produced many of his most inventive pictures. 63 illustrations in color, 10 in black and white.
Hans Hofmann (Modern Master Series, Vol. 10)
by Cynthia Goodman
from Abbeville Press
Hofmann: Abstraction as plastic expression and notes made in Hofmann's classes
Hans Hofmann with selected writings by the artist
Search for the Real Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann Drawings
Hofmann;: Twelve color plates, twenty-one black and white illustrations (The pocket museum)
Education of an artist
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