HANS HOFMANN

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HANSHOFMANN

McENERY

AMERINGER

YOH E

ART LIKE LIFE IS REAL

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

tel: 212 445 0051 www.amy-nyc.com

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Clockwise: Miz Hofmann, Samuel Kootz, Hans Hofmann, Galerie Maeght, Paris January 1949. Photo: E.L. White Jr.

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Given the obvious quality, depth, and range of Hans Hofmann’s art, his standing as one of our greatest artists should be firmly secure, beyond any serious question. Yet this has never been quite the case, not sixty years ago, not today. To be sure, he has been widely acclaimed. He has been honored with countless exhibitions, innumerable books and essays written by some of our best art writers. His work has been included in private and public collections the world over. But there have always been doubters. In the early sixties, for example, Donald Judd could say the admiration for Hofmann’s art was “puzzling” (Arts, 1964), while at the same time Frank Stella, Judd’s contemporary, held Hofmann in the highest esteem, a respect that has only grown with time. We may well ask how two artists, in that moment so apparently similar in outlook and approach, could see Hofmann in such different ways, especially when Hofmann was at the peak of his powers. Therein lies a tale, the story not only of how a giant of an artist has been viewed, but also of how we, the art public, have understood the course of modern art.

For all his fame, rightly earned, he has been somewhat marginalized in the textbooks and surveys, kept separate from the major thrusts of abstract expressionism, the art with which he is mostly associated. We don’t seem to know quite what to do with him. He somehow seems to go against the grain. To a large extent, this has been our fault, but on reflection it also has to do with Hofmann’s way—his path toward realizing his art and how he lived his life. His history is unique. But it now looks as if he knew what he was doing all along, so if he did go against the grain it was in part by design. Hofmann managed to keep himself apart, to stay at a distance from the “corrupting odor of incense,” as his avid champion Clement Greenberg put it.

Some of this was not by choice, however. Indeed, his connection with abstract expressionism has often been rejected. He has been left out of exhibitions in which he most certainly belonged, the most notable being his omission from New American Painting, a landmark exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art and circulated in Europe in 1958-59. Worse, he was not invited by his colleagues to join in the famous Life photo of the “Irrascibles,” although he had signed the original letter of protest in 1943. These aren’t the only such omissions. Let it be said, however, that if Hofmann isn’t an abstract expressionist, then there is no such thing as abstract expressionism. (The same is true for Arshile Gorky, who often suffers the same misguided judgment.) However, Hofmann’s art and biography were different from those of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Franz Kline, artists most commonly thought of as the heart of this group. But this

HANSHOFMANN


William C. Agee

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need not disqualify him from the circle: The painterly, explosive nature of his art places him squarely in the midst of mid-twentieth century American art. We might say he is of, but not in, abstract expressionism as it is commonly considered.

His art is too big, too bold, to be encapsulated in a few years after 1945, the years we generally identify as the heyday of abstract expressionism. He can’t be contained or made to fit our standard art chronologies, especially since more than a few writ-ers and artists still think American art was invented in 1945. But modern American art has a long history, dating from 1904 and spanning the twentieth century with greater continuity than we have understood or even cared to consider. We need to think of Hofmann as belonging to this long history, from his arrival in Paris in 1904 to his death in 1966 and beyond. It is a history that spans more than a hundred years and is continuing today.

To start, we need to look harder than we custom-arily have at his early life and at his point of historical entry into the modern age. He was born in Munich in 1880, a year before Picasso, and he was nurtured and educated in the late nineteenth century during an era of vast scientific discovery and growing understand-ing of the workings of the natural world around us. Hofmann had a limitless curiosity, so it is little wonder that his first interests were in science and in nature, including the science of color, which was just then truly blossoming. At an early age, he was also studying the old masters in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, an unrivaled collection of great art. The era was a deeply romantic period, best symbolized by Wagner, so we can understand wherein lie the roots of Hofmann’s spirituality and optimism, the attributes that defined his art and his life. He was a bubbling, sparkling pres-ence who took up a lot of space. He seemed larger than life to many, including this writer, who saw him at Kootz Gallery openings when a student. No hint of the suffering artist is found here.

The best description of Hofmann may well be that offered by Frederick S. Wight in 1957 (all cita-tions may be found in the bibliography):

Hans Hofmann, at seventy-six, is, a spec-tacle of health and exuberance, a man of a compelling physical amplitude. Rubens might have brushed him in; visibly he is a product of the baroque spirit. He is glow-ingly affectionate, fluent, amiably authori-tative, and philosophically explanatory in a language of his own, an English that has not ceased to be German. He nudges his phrases with the constant persuasive ‘nich-er’ (a Bavarian condensation of ‘nicht wahr’ [‘isn’t it so?’]). To approach Hofmann is to enter a metaphysical world of his own cre-ation—what he calls his cosmology—a way of seeing the universe. Soon you begin to feel that philosophy or faith as an external fact, and to see Hofmann as a Copernicus who has placed the sun where it belongs. He has found a solar role for color.

When we examine Hofmann’s history all the way back to the nineteenth century, we see that he came of age when the science of color was being discovered and investigated, part of the burst of in-vestigation into the material world around us. It was as if color was absorbed in his artistic DNA, for above all, color defined his art from the first to the last. His Self-Portrait of 1902, one of the few paintings done by him before 1934 that has survived, shows his first explorations in color principles, via a modified pointillism of Seurat, who had died only twelve years earlier. We find late offshoots of this approach—spots of high color—throughout his art. Look for example at Laburnum, 1954 (p.41), riddled with quick hits of color that we can trace to Seurat, although they are opened up and made more intense. What better way to

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capture the blossoms of this beautiful tree? But such is the intensity of this painting that Hofmann carries us into another world altogether, suggesting a long lost paradise, perhaps even the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Hofmann never lost touch with nature; it was too much a part of his nineteenth century roots. Small wonder then that much of Hofmann’s art revolved around abstract landscapes.

He was in Paris by 1904, at the birth of the mod-ern movement, when artists were assimilating the possibilities of high and intense color. He worked alongside Matisse, and he knew Picasso and Robert Delaunay; we can believe him when he claimed he taught Delaunay all he knew about color. In his full his-tory, then, Hofmann takes his place with Patrick Bruce, Arthur B. Carles, and Alfred H. Maure as among the first Americans (as a citizen to be) to engage Matisse and color, in a type of art equally as important as cub-ism to the art of the century. For some, because of this background, he seemed too old to belong with the young Americans who emerged after 1940. That was a myopic view, for Hofmann’s early discoveries and the traditions that he helped nourish in the first years of the twentieth century lay at the heart of the best American art that has followed.

We have devalued color, thinking it too soft and easy compared to cubism, just as the Florentines dis-missed Venetian color as too decorative. Color has to do with our feelings, and Hofmann is nothing but feelings, which terrify and embarrass us, causing us to run and hide. Hofmann reveled in them. Matisse’s famous remark of 1908, that art should be something like a good armchair, has stayed with us, causing most color artists to be dismissed as decorative, in the pejorative sense. We have willfully misinterpreted Matisse’s statement, failing to understand that his call for an art of color was a call for an art of harmony and serenity, which has profound spiritual connotations. It is no accident that Hofmann’s art, at heart based on controlled explosions of color, implies and embodies

a deep spiritual vein that proclaims and reaches for a higher cosmic order. We need to remember that his fa-mous book of essays in 1948, The Search for the Real, concluded that the ultimate goal in this search and that the quest for the Real was the spiritual dimension of life and the universe. For Hofmann, this was as real as the bountiful paint on his canvas.

Hofmann began to teach in 1915. After that, he did little of his own artwork, except for drawing, until

1934. It is a curious gap. World War I intervened, and Hofmann, as he said, had to make a living. But we all have to make a living (the 99 percent anyway), and we manage as best we can while doing our chosen work. There are other reasons for his delay, I think. Hofmann, like Arthur Dove at the same time, had difficulty getting to his talent and was reluctant to face it directly. He seemed to know he needed time

Alfred Maurer, Still Life with Red Bowl and Black Bottle, c. 1929-30 oil on gessoed board 223/4 x 181/8 inches 57.8 x 46 cmCollection of Tommy and Gill LiPuma

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to grow into his prodigious aptitude, that he wasn’t ready to make a full-out plunge into serious painting. It had to be all or nothing for him—that was his nature. His teaching was his pulpit, as Bartlett Hayes said, and he was preaching to himself as much as to his students. He had to be sure, confident in his beliefs about art, fully ready to take on the task of making ambitious art that could stand with the best of his time. Again, Wight put it well: “His painting therefore was not only what he did, but what he was forced to believe.” By teaching, he could account for and jus-tify his faith in his slow absorption of the past, grow-ing out of a tradition that gradually became his own. In the course of time, Wight added, Hofmann moved from “anguished uncertainty to boundless assur-ance” (pp. 14-15). Part of this may be the emigrant’s dilemma of breaking loose from the hierarchies of European art and life, and acclimating to the unre-stricted freedoms of America. Think of Emerson’s dictum: “… build therefore your own world.” Did he ever! Hofmann moved, we might say, from doubt to total certainty, to the most fecund pictorial imagina-tion of extraordinary exuberances of any artist in the twentieth century.

Hofmann’s teaching had made him famous, though, and led the painter Worth Ryder to invite him to teach at The University of California, Berkeley, in 1930. His impact was felt in Bay area painting for years to come. It is a story yet to be told in detail, but Sam Francis certainly felt it in the late forties while he was studying there. By 1934, Hofmann had settled in the United States, and he soon established his famous schools in New York and Provincetown. He was down, however, depressed that he was only drawing, and not painting. Luckily, he reunited with Arthur B. Carles (1882-1952), whom he had known in Paris. Carles was an important member of the pioneering generation of modern artists in America, and through Carles and his daughter Mercedes, herself a painter, Hofmann found his way back to painting.

Carles is not as well known today as, say, John Marin or Arthur Dove, but his work of the thirties is a powerful expressionist and highly color-keyed art, a kind of fusion of Matisse’s color and Picasso’s cubism, something akin to the very type of art that Hofmann himself worked toward throughout his life. Barbara Wolanin has pointed out that Hofmann particularly

admired Carles’ painting Composition, 1935-1937, a work that might almost pass for a Hofmann of the for-ties or fifties. Carles’ dynamic Composition of c. 1939-1940 (Hirshhorn Museum Collection) is so powerful that it, too, surely suggested rich painterly possibilities to Hofmann. Some time ago, the now-retired Judith Zilczer, curator at the Hirshhorn, understood the close relation of Carles’ picture to abstract expressionism and installed it as the lead painting to that group’s sec-tions of works. It absolutely fit and made perfect sense. To this introductory section, one might well have added works by Dove and Marin. They can be said to be ab-stract expressionist painters, avant la lettre perhaps, but all crucial in establishing a painterly, fluid abstraction that presaged abstract expressionism as we have de-fined it. There is a greater continuity between pre- and

Arthur B. Carles, Composition, 1935-37 oil on canvas 44 x 60 inches 111.8 x 152.4 cmPrivate Collection

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post-1945 art than we have recognized, or wanted to if we believed in the Big Bang Theory of modern art—that modernism in this country was born in 1945. Hofmann is part of that continuity; he started when most of his abstract expressionist colleagues were barely infants.

However we may view this, our eyes should be on the work that thereafter flowed forth from Hofmann’s studios for thirty years nonstop, without letup. In the thirties, color poured onto, and down and across, his paintings of interiors, as if a torrential flood of paint had been let forth from the depths of body and soul. Indeed, it had been. He was fifty-five at the time, but the color and drawing had the exuberance of a young man let loose from an anguished, pent-up confinement. The color is of such intensity that it emphatically con-firms Greenberg’s famous statement that at Hofmann’s classes in the thirties you could learn more about color than you could from Matisse himself. These glorious paintings are a manifestation of what Hofmann himself said about painting: “The heavens opened up and what comes down is color, sound, and music.” Could it ever be said better? His art makes him one of our most important artists of the 1930s, an artist who played a crucial role in expanding modernism in America at a time when our art was mired in the dreary doldrums of social urban realism of one sort or another. These paintings also might well be called the true start of color-field painting in America.

The outpouring of his art picked up in the forties, even as it moved to a more abstract type of work. In paint-ings such as Shapes in Black, 1944 (p.15), we see, literally, the controlled explosions of color, as his art so often has been described. It seems to be his own universe, expand-ing into the dark reaches of multiple galaxies, looking into and beyond Van Gogh’s Starry Night, a kind of galactic Fourth of July fireworks display. We may even detect a rough circular shape, with spokes, suggesting the wheel of a chariot as it races across the fiery sky as we exam-ine the intense reds at the upper left. His sense of the cosmos relates to that of other early American modern-ists, not the least of them being Albert Pinkham Ryder,

whom Hofmann loved for the fullness of his color. This point of a new maturity for Hofmann’s art coincides with the moment that Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, and others were moving into a new type of painterly abstraction that defined the emergence of abstract expressionism. We may also note that Hofmann’s use of black marks the start of an extensive run of black and white undertaken by artists such as Robert Motherwell, Kline, Pollock, de Kooning, and then by Stella, in the fifties. Hofmann may have been a late bloomer, but he was way ahead in other respects, making his relation to abstract expressionism all the more puzzling. At this time, as in Seated Woman IV, 1944 (p.19), we see Hofmann adding to the common use of a hybrid figure, part human, part beast, relating to the personages favored by the Surrealists and adapted by many of the painters of the emerging younger genera-tion. We can fairly say that Hofmann took from abstract expressionism, just as he added to it.

Something of the mythic, another defining charac-teristic of early abstract expressionism, appeared in paint-ings such as the beautiful Conjurer (Small version) of 1946 (p.23), with the figure at the right, the magician, calling into being a series of contained bursts, all appearing to hold secrets of their own. On closer inspection, these bursts actually take the form of eggs, the old symbol of birth and life, and in each there is a full and developed pictorial life, as if each were a mini-painting in its own right. By then, after but a few years of full-time painting, Hofmann’s touch, his way with paint and the surface, had reached a new height of subtlety and sensitivity. For we need to remember that when we speak of color we need to speak not just of hues, but also of the weight, density, amount, translucence, opaqueness, scale, quantity, and a host of other ways in which the artist’s application of paint records his shifting feelings, like a seismograph of his emotions. Here, the paint surfaces, as they do throughout Hofmann’s life, can range from the virtually transparent field to the dense red of the figure on the right. We feel Hofmann at work, as we see in the photographs of him painting. He moves forward, then back, like a top athlete at work, touching, hitting,

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jabbing, first with brush or knife, and then using a cloth to wipe and smudge to make the most ethereal of gauze-like space. We may recall the late work of Titian, like Hofmann a master of old age art, literally touching the canvas with his hand and his fingers, caressing the paint into an almost palpable, human existence.

Hofmann was a master colorist, to be sure, but he had also absorbed cubism into his very pictorial being. In 1950, he began introducing broad planes of intense color that can be said to be a unique fusion of Matisse and Picasso, but in an art all his own. In Composition No. 5 and Push and Pull III (p.29 and p.31), both of that year, Hofmann essentially developed a new kind of cubism, one of large broad color planes that went beyond any-thing that cubism had done to that point. Cubism was supposed to be on the decline, finished as a vehicle for important art. Hofmann tells us otherwise, reminding us once again that the artist, not the critic, tells us where art is going. Hofmann reinvigorated cubism as a conduit for art of the highest reach, both then and until the end of his life. Once again, Hofmann is in the vanguard, for along with Stuart Davis and Charles Sheeler, he made cubism a catalyst for new and fresh art. Cubist planes did open up the surface of the painting, to let it breathe and to let color and shapes expand, as one stretches out in the fresh air on a crisp spring day. This is no small mat-ter, for a continuing problem for abstract expressionism is the increasing density, even clutter, of the surface, giving paintings an overworked quality that could stifle the vitality of a picture. Here, too, Hofmann is in the vanguard, for in 1951 Pollock and de Kooning moved to open the dense surfaces of their paintings: Pollock in his black pictures, de Kooning in his Women.

In the title of Push and Pull, Hofmann introduced his famous theory of push-pull, one of the basic prin-ciples in his art. It has caused a lot of confusion. Simply stated, by balancing forces that come forward—the strong yellow—with a darker hue, blue, that tends to recede, Hofmann asserts the reality of the picture plane as a two-dimensional surface. That light colors

advance, and dark recede, has been basic to western painting and was first postulated by Leonardo. By us-ing colors this way, Hofmann participates in the mod-ernist drive, evident since Manet, to move beyond the Renaissance system of perspective that depicted the illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface. Thus, the painting becomes a reality in itself. On this surface, the artist is then free to create his own worlds, which is exactly what Hofmann cherished more than anything. In his Germanic way, Hofmann wrote extensively, of-ten making his art seem more difficult to get to than it really was. Theory can do that, but art, like life, is real, not a theory, and it depends on direct and immediate experience. His teaching and his writings have often overshadowed the full glory of his painting. It’s OK in Germany, but here we like—or used to like—to think of our artists as penniless and starving. But wait. Modern science now tells us that there is a counterforce to gravity, an anti-gravitational force that is called dark energy, exerting—yes, that’s right—a push-pull effect throughout the universe. In fact, scientists now tell us that the three-dimensional world is an illusion, that our world is really a two-dimensional surface. So maybe Hofmann’s idea is not a theory at all. Further, we are learning of the Higgs particle, the theory that even the emptiest of spaces is filled with a substance capable of bestowing mass upon particles. So space is not a fictive pictorial supposition, but a living, breath-ing presence that surrounds us. Hofmann’s early inter-est in science turns up again, even if after the fact. But one wonders if Hofmann didn’t have all this figured out long ago—a hundred years ago and more.

By opening the surface, Hofmann also pointed to a new clarity and directness, as in the Image in Green, also of 1950. It is probably a self-portrait. Who knew? Hofmann’s limitless diversity can take us into the most unexpected directions. His range knows no bounds. The image is exactly in the center, like an old master altar, keeping us focused on the vital point of life, the center. When we are lost, we say we need to center ourselves,

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to concentrate on our most basic needs. De Kooning did the same thing at this time. In the second Women series, he put the figure squarely in the center—because, as he said, there was no reason to put it anywhere else. This way, the image provided the structure: You didn’t have to invent it, which allowed you to focus on other things, like the paint quality and its application. Think ahead then a mere four years later when Jasper Johns used the American flag as the full composition—the flag is the painting, thus letting him concentrate on the paint itself. This in turn becomes one of the basic procedures of art in the late fifties and early sixties. Maybe Hofmann isn’t so much against the grain as we have thought.

We don’t so much see, or view, a painting by Hofmann, as we enter into the space of the artist’s own magical world. There is nothing here but joy and exuber-ance, a life vitality that courses through his art. No wonder he so admired Matisse’s famous painting Joie de Vivre. There is no existential angst of the kind we often associ-ate with postwar abstract expressionism, no doomsday rhetoric from such as Barnet Newman, who claimed that

the group was painting as if they were the first artists, bringing art back to life after the cataclysmic events of World War II. Hogwash, says Hofmann—Pollock, too, who in the years 1945-47 painted some of the most lyrical works done by anyone at the time. Hofmann luxuriates in nature, in the world around him, happy to be alive, and his brush and paint move in sync with it. There always seem to be references to nature or to the universe be-yond us. In Aquatic Garden, 1960 (p.47), we feel we are in Monet’s garden itself, by and in his pond, immersed not in water so much as a magical liquid transformed into ever higher intensities and depths of hues. Tina Dickey has found that Hofmann loved the underwater explo-rations conducted by Jacques Cousteau in the fifties. Indeed, much of Hofmann’s art moves and reflects light as do the oceans he loved so much. Everything is active, in motion, moving as Hofmann’s hands do, creating a world of its own, reserved solely for us, the viewer. The paint has an all-over intensity, covering the entirety of the surface, implying more outside itself, as if the canvas can barely contain the artist. His process of painting is the process of life itself, filled with vitality, the elan vital proposed by Henri Bergson in Paris in 1907 in his famous book, Creative Evolution, that captured the attention of artists working there.

The very next year, 1961, Hofmann’s work could swing 180 degrees, or so it would seem. He never let himself settle for a signature style; he always pushed himself to go beyond that. The lazy eyes of critics and collectors have held this against him, mistakenly thinking this meant a lack of direction or commitment to a given manner. Hofmann had as many directions as there are stars in the galaxies he looked to, and he embraced them all with no guilt, just joy. Great paintings by him never stop emerging. In Black Diamond, 1961 (p.49), surely a mas-terpiece by any standard, we encounter a rough circle, the black mass (dark energy?) of a rare diamond, known as carbonado, seemingly on the verge of exploding with bits of color—pure matter for Hofmann—flying off it. Some feel the carbonado came into being billions of years ago

Hans Hofmann, Image in Green, 1950oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches 76.2 x 61 cm

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under high-pressure conditions in the earth’s interior, or from the shock of meteors hitting the earth. Either way, Hofmann has it perfectly, an art metaphor, on the edge of a release of huge energies. Black, but in his hands, it teems with life as we peer into it and take in the teeming color actions within it. There is not a single black here, but countless blacks, of varying thickness and types of paint surfaces—glossy, matte, thick, thin—that seem to compel us to run our hand over it as if it were a miniature moon surface. Within these infinite variations and themes, there are streaks, dashes, and overlays of yellow, white, and alizarin intertwining, each seeming like a new variation of a theme within a theme. Then we see that there is a second circle, one surrounding the black mass, a circle of large tabs of color, recalling Seurat’s pointillism. They are brilliant colors, starting with intense yellows that are then modulated, turning to cadmium reds and oranges, as they enclose the center. Only then do we understand that this circular movement is an abstract depiction of the sun as it rises, reaches high noon and then descends into twilight and evening. Indeed, it is Hofmann’s own solar system of color and paint brought to life under his hand. He misses nothing. Even at the lower left, we see whites brushed over whites, with thin washes of yellow, so that even the most insignificant area of the canvas is brought to life. It leaves us breathless. It seems like another up-date of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, now taken to a far reach, worthy of E.T. or Star Wars. Hofmann always had his eye on a larger order, the cosmic forces above us that call to our spiritual dimension. They are both landscapes, but typical of Hofmann, each is of a distinctly different type. As Frederick Wight, once again, put it, his work is “filled with resplendent outbursts, and his canvases look new in the world, a fresh part of creation.” Or, as he continued, “the tensions of a cosmic order translate into the tensions of feeling.” Hofmann often worked from nature, and a deep part of him was a landscape painter. But Pollock was also a landscape painter at many points, as were de Kooning, Still, Adolph Gottlieb, Rothko, David Smith, and others. So in this, he is not that different from his younger colleagues.

The circle may be an indirect reference, or a response, to the circle paintings that were done at the same time by Kenneth Noland, an artist we know was affected by Hofmann. Hofmann’s world is his own, but he knows what else is going on in it. Hofmann was a gen-erous man, and he was open in his appreciation of and respect for other artists, both earlier artists and those of the time. This, remember, was in a period when artists like Newman, Still, Rothko, and Gottlieb all thought they were the best artists in the world, and as Thomas Hess observed, any mention of possible influence was like a trial for an act of high treason. Hofmann was a big man, generous in his use of materials—his paint could be as thick at times as that of Pollock, and some paintings took years (if ever) to dry. There was no holding back for him in his work or in his teaching. Famously, he was more than generous, unstinting even, in the time and effort he gave to his students

In the sixties, as younger artists turned from paint-ing to three dimensions, Hofmann was once more work-ing against the grain. His painting blossomed as never be-fore, and he was making, consistently, many of the best pictures he had ever done. In 1962, at the age of eighty-two (Titian and Matisse also worked in their eighties), he was as active as ever. His late work joins the exalted ranks of other artists through the ages who underwent a virtual rebirth in their last years. Think of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Matisse, Stuart Davis, and John Marin, for example.

At times, his work reflected the drive toward sim-pler formats in the sixties. In Candor, 1962 (p.57), he used the flat, frontal cubist planes that seem to step forward to present themselves to us, almost as the mythic personages of the forties might have. These shapes might well remind us of Matisse’s colored cutout papers of the late forties and early fifties, but they are joined in Hofmann’s own type of cubism. In fact, they can be traced to the rough frontal planes of color in Cézanne’s late landscapes, the paintings that indeed carry his dictum that color is form. The format

Hans Hofmann, Exaltment, 1947, oil on canvas 593/4 x 473/4 inches 151.77 x 121.29 cmAddison Gallery of American Art, museum purchase, 1960.62012 © Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann TrustArtists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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seems simple enough, until we study the interactions of the complementary colors, the red and green, a vivid demonstration of the law of simultaneous con-trasts, by which one color changes and heightens the other in a ceaseless dialogue. These are radical paint-ings, so complex are they, given this interchange, plus the subtle rich colors that come up from the appar-ently monochromatic background. Here, even when there doesn’t seem to be much happening, Hofmann’s subtlety takes over, and we are lost in a world of his making. As he said, what he wanted most “was to swim in color through all the mysterious regions.” The sur-face seems suspended in space. The life of space is like life itself—alive, dynamic, filled with chance, move-ment, interaction. Nicher?

With all the attention given to the young abstract expressionist artists after 1945, as in Pollock’s spread in Life in August 1949, Hofmann felt that the pioneers of American modernism were overlooked. In 1950, he spoke of them as the forerunners of a “true and great American tradition that is being carried on by the van-guard of the most advanced modern artists.” He count-ed among them Maurer, John B. Flannagan, Carles, Gorky, and Ryder. Hofmann himself should be counted among these pioneers, standing tall as a beacon in a long and glorious tradition still being defined today. He had a strong influence on such artists as Helen Frankenthaler, and today his art lives on—in the baroque swirls of Stella’s later art, for example, which are based on the twists and turns in Hofmann’s Exaltment, 1947, the painting Stella first saw at Andover in 1952 that guides him yet to this day. The painterly handling of large amounts of paint forming the surface, which marks the later work of Darby Bannard and Jules Olitski, also can trace its ancestry to

Hofmann’s dense, and intense, surfaces. As Stella put it, Hofmann extends for us the tradition of the manipula-tion of paint transformed into exalted works of art. Thus, to try to encapsulate Hofmann within the confines of abstract expressionism seems as pointless as it is fruit-less. De Kooning was right when he said “to try to name us is disastrous.” For finally, there are no movements, only artists, and if Hofmann belongs to any movement, it is the modern movement itself—all of it. Hofmann re-veals glorious worlds to us if we but open our eyes and minds—and hearts, as he himself did. Nicher?

William C. AgeeEvelyn Kranes Kossak professor of art history at

Hunter College, City University of New York

William Agee holds degrees from both Princeton and Yale, and has published numerous articles, catalogues and monographs in connection with exhibitions he has organized on Stuart Davis, Morgan Russell, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Morton Livingston Schamberg, Fairfield Porter, Ray Parker, Donald Judd, Sam Francis, Tony Smith, Alfred Jensen and others. He is currently preparing a book, Modern Art In America 1908-1968, for Phaidon Press. Prior to joining the Hunter faculty, Agee held directorial positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and at the Pasadena Art Museum in California, and held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Agee wrote the featured essay in the recently published Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, 1946-1994, edited by Debra Burchett-Lere. He is cur-rently working on two exhibitions for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum: “Triangulating Modernism: Dove, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz,” scheduled for 2014, and “Challenging 1945: Pre and Post 1945 Art in America,” scheduled for 2015.

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Shapes in Black1944, oil on panel, 301/2 x 40 inches / 77.5 x 104.1 cmHH Estate #M-0170, Artist Catalogue #273-1944

ProvenanceCollection of the Artist.The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, New York.

ExhibitionsBasel, Switzerland: Fondation Beyeler, Action Painting: Jackson Pollock (27 January-12 May 2008).

LiteratureHunter, Sam, Tina Dickey, and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann. 2nd ed. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2006. Illustrated in color, p.105.

Perl, Jed, essay. Hans Hofmann, The Unabashed Unconscious: Reflections on Hofmann and Surrealism, catalogue for the exhibition. New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2006. Illustrated in color, p.11.

Fondation Beyeler, ed. Action Painting: Jackson Pollock, with essays by Ulf Küster, Pepe Karmel, Gottfried Boehm, Robert Fleck, and Jason Edward Kaufman. Basel, Switzerland: Beyeler Museum AG, 2008. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Action Painting: Jackson Pollock, Beyeler Fondation, Basel, Switzerland. Illustrated in color, plate 28, p.70.

detail overleaf: Shapes in Black

18

Seated Woman IV1944, oil on panel, 61 x 47 inches / 154.9 x 119.4 cmHH Estate #M-1059, Artist Catalogue #611-1944

ProvenanceCollection of the Artist. The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, New York.

ExhibitionsAndover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American Art, Hans Hofmann: Painter and Teacher, retrospective in conjunction with the publication of Hofmann’s Search for the Real and Other Essays (2 January-9 February 1948).

Paris: Galerie Maeght, Hans Hofmann, Peintures (January 1949).

Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Miro in America (21 April-27 June 1982).

Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofîa, The Surrealists in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School (21 December 1999–27 February 2000). Traveled to Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France.

LiteratureWeeks, Sara T. and Bartlett H. Hayes, eds. Search for the Real, Hans Hofmann, with essays by Hans Hofmann. Andover Mass: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1948. Cambridge, Mass., and London: The M.I.T. Press, 1967. Illustrated in black and white, pp.27 and 79

Ellsworth, Paul. “Hans Hofmann: Reply to Questionnaire and Comments on a Recent Exhibition.” Art & Architecture vol. 66, no. 11 (November 1949), pp.22-28, 45-47. Illustrated in black and white.

Hunter, Sam. Hans Hofmann. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1963. Illustrated in black and white, plate 10.

Rose, Barbara. Miró in America. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, 1982. Published in conjunction with the exhibi-tion at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (21 April-27 June 1982). Illustrated in black and white, figure 18, p.23.

Hunter, Sam, Tina Dickey, and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann, 1st and 2nd eds. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2002 and 2006. Illustrated in color, p.101 (2002), p.107 (2006).

Dickey, Tina and Inka Essenhigh, essays. Hans Hofmann: Search for the Real, catalogue for the exhibition. New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2005. Illustrated in color, p.13.

Perl, Jed, essay. Hans Hofmann, The Unabashed Unconscious: Reflections on Hofmann and Surrealism, catalogue for the exhibition, New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2006. pp.14-15. Illustrated in color, p.15.

detail overleaf: Seated Woman IV

22

The Conjurer (Small Version)1946, oil on panel, 25 x 30 inches / 63.5 x 76.2 cmHH Estate #M-0253, Artist Catalogue #116-1946

ProvenanceCollection of the artist. The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, New York.

ExhibitionsNew York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Early Paintings (20–31 January 1959), curated by Clement Greenberg.

Vercelli, Italy: Guggenheim a Vercelli, former Church of San Marco, Peggy Guggenheim e la Nuova Pittura Americana (21 November 2008–1 March 2009), catalogue no. 38.

Düsseldorf, Germany: Museum Kunstpalast, From Pollock to Schumacher: Le Grand Geste’(9 April–1 August 2010). Wiesbaden, Germany: Museum Wiesbaden, Der Blaue Reiter, Jawlensky, Kandinsky und die Folgen (31 October 2010–24 February 2011).

LiteratureBarbero, Luca Massimo, Philip Rylands, and Valentina Sonzogni. Peggy Guggenheim e la Nuova Pittura Americana, catalogue for exhibition. Florence and Milan, Italy: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Giunti Arte Mostre Musei, 2008. Illustrated in color, p.93.

detail overleaf: The Conjurer (Small Version)

26

Muted Abstraction1947, oil on linen, 41 x 30 inches / 104.1 x 76.2 cmHH Estate #M-0999, Artist Catalogue #485-1947

ProvenanceCollection of the Artist.The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, New York

ExhibitionsBoston: Acme Fine Art and Design and the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, Mass., Days Lumberyard Studios, Provincetown 1915-1972 (15 May-22 August 2009).

LiteratureHunter, Sam, Tina Dickey, and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann, 2nd ed. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2006. Illustrated in color, p.136.

Dickey, Tina and Inka Essenhigh, essays. Hans Hofmann: Search for the Real, catalogue for the exhibition. New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2005. Illustrated in color, p.25.

28

Composition No. 51950, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches / 91.4 x 121.9 cm HH Estate #M-9003, Artist Catalogue #317-1950


ExhibitionsNaples, Fla.: Naples Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective, curated by Karen Wilkin (1 November 2003-21 March 2004).

Waltham, Mass.: The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Hans Hofmann: Circa 1950, (14 January-5 April 2009). Traveled to The Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, Okla. (21 February-9 May 2010) and The Weatherspoon Art Museum of The University of North Carolina, Greensboro (3 July-17 October 2010).

New Britain, Conn.: New Britain Museum of American Art: The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Art Colony (15 July-16 October 2011. Traveling to The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pa. (30 October 2011-22 January 2012), The Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kan. (5 February-29 April 2012), and The Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, Mass. (18 May-26 August 2012).

LiteratureHunter, Sam, Tina Dickey, and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann, 1st and 2nd eds. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2002 and 2006. Illustrated in color, p.130 (2002), p.150 (2006).

Wilkin, Karen. Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective. New York: George Braziller Publishers, 2003. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective, Naples Museum of Art, Naples, Fla. Illustrated in color, plate no. 21.

Rush, Michael and Catherine Morris, ed. Hans Hofmann: Circa 1950, essays by Michael Rush, Catherine Morris, and Irving Sadler, catalogue for the exhibition. Waltham, Mass.: The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, 2008. Illustrated in color, p.121.

Noelle, Alexander J. The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Art Colony (1899-2011), catalogue for the exhibition. New Britain, Conn: New Britain Museum of American Art, 2011. Illustrated in color, p.77.

30

Push and Pull III1950, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inchesHH Estate #M-0251, Artist Catalogue #619-1950

ProvenanceCollection of the Artist. The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, New York.

ExhibitionsNew York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: New Paintings (24 October-13 November 1950).

Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 146th Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture (21 January-25 February 1951).

Naples, Fla.: Naples Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective, curated by Karen Wilkin (1 November 2003-21 March 2004).

Waltham, Mass.: The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, Hans Hofmann: Circa 1950 (14 January-5 April 2009). Traveled to The Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, Okla. (21 February-9 May 2010), and The Weatherspoon Art Museum of The University of North Carolina, Greensboro (3 July-17 October 2010).

New Britain, Conn: New Britain Museum of American Art, The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Art Colony (15 July-16 October 2011). Traveling to The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pa. (30 October 2011-22 January 2012), The Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kan. (5 February-29 April 2012), and The Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, Mass. (18 May-26 August 2012).

LiteratureHunter, Sam, Tina Dickey and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann, 1st and 2nd eds. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2002 and 2006. Illustrated in color, p.130 (2002) p.149 (2006).


Dickey, Tina. Hans Hofmann: Exuberant Eye. Chicago: KN Gallery, 2007.

Rush, Michael and Catherine Morris, ed. Hans Hofmann: Circa 1950, essays by Michael Rush, Catherine Morris and Irving Sadler, catalogue for the exhibition. Waltham, Mass.: The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, 2008. Illustrated in color, p.121.

Noelle, Alexander J. The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Art Colony (1899-2011), catalogue for the exhibition. New Britain, Conn: New Britain Museum of American Art, 2011. Illustrated in color, p.77.

32

Acension1950, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches / 152.4 x 121.9 cmHH Estate #M-1347, Artist Catalogue #163-1952


ExhibitionsNaples, Fla.: Naples Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective, curated by Karen Wilkin (1 November 2003-21 March 2004).

LiteratureHunter, Sam, Tina Dickey, and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann, 1st ed. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2002. Illustrated in color, p.145.


detail overleaf: Acension

36

Composition No. 11953, oil on canvas, 84 x 48 inches / 213.4 x 121.9 cmHH Estate #M-0014, Artist Catalogue #825-1950


ExhibitionsNew York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: New Paintings Created in 1953 (16 November-12 December 1953).

Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, Sixty-first American Exhibition Paintings and Sculpture (21 October-5 December, 1954).

Bennington, Vt.: Bennington College Art Museum, A Retrospective Exhibition of the Paintings of Hans Hofmann (May 1955).

Venice, Italy: La Biennale di Venezia, XXXIV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte Venezia (1968).

New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, A Retrospective Exhibition of Hans Hofmann (24 April-16 June 1957). Traveled to Des Moines Art Center (4 July–4 August 1957), San Francisco Museum of Art (21 August–22 September 1957), Seattle Art Museum (11 December 1957–12 January 1958), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (7 February–11 March, 1958), Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, N.Y. (28 March–30 April, 1958), Art Galleries of the University of California, Los Angeles (6 October–4 November 1957) and Baltimore Museum of Art (16 May–17 June 1958).

Nuremberg, Germany: Fränkische Galerie am Marientor, Hans Hofmann (March 1962). Traveled to Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany; Kongresshalle, Berlin; and Stådischen Galerie, Munich.

London: Waddington Galleries, Hans Hofmann Paintings (9 June-4 July 1970).

LiteratureCatalogo della XXXIV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte Venezia. Venice, Italy: Alfieri-Edizioni d’Arte, 1968. Illustration no. 47.

Hunter, Sam. Hans Hofmann. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1963. Illustrated in color. fig. 41.

Hans Hofmann: Paintings. London: The Waddington Galleries, 1970. Illustrated in color.

Hunter, Sam, Tina Dickey and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann, 1st and 2nd eds. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2002 and 2006. Illustrated in color p.148 (2002), p.170 (2006)

38

Laburnum1954, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches / 101.6 x 127 cmHH Estate #M-0365, Artist Catalogue #780-1954


ExhibitionsSalzburg, Austria, Galeria Academia Salzburg Residenz, Hans Hofmann: The American Years, Retrospective (July–September 1999).

Naples, Fla.: Naples Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective, curated by Karen Wilkin (1 November 2003–21 March 2004).

Chicago, KN Gallery, Hans Hofmann: The Exuberant Eye (May–June 2007).

LiteratureHerskvic, Marika, ed. New York School Abstract Expressionists: Artist Choice by Artists. New York: New York School Press, 2000. Illustrated as color plate, p.184.

Hunter, Sam, Tina Dickey, and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann, 1st and 2nd eds. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2002 and 2006. Illustrated in color, p. 159 (2002), p.183 (2006).


Schwendener, Martha. “Reviews, Tête-à-Tête.” Time Out: New York (7-13 July 2005).

Perl, Jed, essay. Hans Hofmann, The Unabashed Unconscious: Reflections on Hofmann and Surrealism, catalogue for the exhibition. New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2006. pp.46-47, illustrated in color, p.47.

detail overleaf: Laburnum

42

Abstraction in White1954, oil on linen, 40 x 50 inches / 101.6 x 127 cmHH Estate #M-0131, Artist Catalogue #172-1955


ExhibitionsModena, Italy: Foro Boario, Action Painting. Arte Americana 1940-1970: Dal disengno all’opera, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero (21 November 2004-27 February 2005).

Reykjavik, Iceland: Reykjavik Art Museum, “From Unuhús to West 8th Street” (15 May-30 August 2009).

LiteratureAmerican Contemporary Art Gallery Yearbook 2002/2003. Munich. Color reproduction pp.28-29.

Barbero, Luca Massimo. Action Painting, Arte Americana 1940-1970: Dal Disegno All’Opera, catalogue for the exhibition. Monaco: 2005. Illustrated in color, p.105.

detail overleaf: Abstraction in White

46

Aquatic Garden1960, oil on panel, 96 x 48 inches / 243.8 x 121.9 cmHH Estate #M-0944, Artist Catalogue #1009-1960


ExhibitionsWashington: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective Exhibition, curated by W.D. Bannard (14 October 1976–2 January 1977). Traveled to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (4 February–3 April 1977).

Beverly Hills, Calif: Gagosian Gallery, A Time & Place: East and West Coast Abstraction From the ’60s and ’70s (21 July–27 August 2005).

New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, Hans Hofmann: The Unabashed Unconscious: Reflections on Hofmann and Surrealism (30 March–29 April 2006).

LiteratureHunter, Sam. Hans Hofmann. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1963. Illustrated in black and white, p.119.

Bannard, Walter Darby. Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective Exhibition. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1976. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective Exhibition, co-sponsored by The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Illustrated in black and white, no. 43, p.84.

Goodman, Cynthia. Hofmann. New York: Abbeville Press, 1986. p.81.


Perl, Jed, essay. Hans Hofmann, The Unabashed Unconscious: Reflections on Hofmann and Surrealism, catalogue for the exhibition. New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2006. pp.52-53.

48

Black Diamond1961, oil on canvas, 60 x 52 inches / 152.4 x 132 cmHH Estate #M-0960, Artist Catalogue #1314-1961


ExhibitionsNew York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Major Paintings 1954-65 (5-26 January 1985).

Naples, Fla.: Naples Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective, curated by Karen Wilkin (1 November 2003–21 March 2004).

LiteratureHans Hofmann: Major Paintings 1954-65, catalogue for the exhibition, New York: André Emmerich Gallery, 1985. Illustrated plate 7.



Perl, Jed, essay. Hans Hofmann, The Unabashed Unconscious: Reflections on Hofmann and Surrealism, catalogue for the exhibition. New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2006. Illustrated in color, p.56.

detail overleaf: Black Diamond

52

Splendour1962, oil on linen, 50 x 40 inches / 127 x 101.6 cmHH Estate #M-0977, Artist Catalogue #1442-1962

ProvenanceCollection of the ArtistEstate of Hans HofmannPrivate Collection (acquired Galerie Lefort, Montreal)Private Collection (acquired Sotheby’s, New York)

ExhibitionsNew York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: New Paintings (5-23 March 1963).

Montreal: Galerie Godard Lefort, Hans Hofmann (October 1971).

Portland, Ore.:, Portland Art Museum, Exhibited with the Collection at the Jubitz Center (October 2005-May 2006).

detail overleaf: Splendour

56

Candor1962 (1963 verso), oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches / 121.9 x 91.4 cmHH Estate #M-0112, Artist Catalogue #1485-1963

ProvenanceCollection of the ArtistThe Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, New YorkPrivate Collection (acquired from Ameringer & Yohe, New York)

ExhibitionsNew York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Major Paintings 1954-1965 (5-26 January 1985).

Venice, Italy: Venice Biennale, XLII Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte Venezia, Art e Scienza—Sezione ‘Colore’ (25 June-8 September 1986).

University Park, Pa.: Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University, Snowiss Gallery of American Art (July 2005-May 2007).

LiteratureHans Hofmann: Major Paintings 1954-1965, catalogue for the exhibition. New York: André Emmerich Gallery, 1985. Illustrated as plate no. 8.


detail overleaf: Candor

1880Hans Hofmann is born in Weissenburg in Bavaria, Germany, on 21 March. His father, Theodor Hofmann, a government official, and his mother, Franciska, the daughter of a prominent brewer and wine producer, have three sons and two daughters. Hans is the second son.

1886The family moves to Munich. Hofmann attends public schools and develops special interests in mathematics, science and music. He plays the violin, piano and organ, and begins to draw.

1896With his father’s help, he finds a position as assistant to the director of public works of the state of Bavaria. He patents several scientific inventions.

1898Hofmann studies painting with Willi Schwarz, who introduces him to Impressionism, at Moritz Heymann’s art school in Munich.

1900Hofmann meets Maria “Miz” Wolfegg, his future wife.

1903Through Willi Schwarz, Hofmann meets Phillip Freudenberg, the nephew of a Berlin collector, who becomes his patron from 1904 to 1914 and enables him to live in Paris (though he often summers in Germany).

1904Hofmann frequents the Café du Dome, a haunt of artists and writers, with Jules Pascin, a friend from Mortiz Heymann’s school. Miz joins him in Paris. Hofmann attends evening sketch classes at the école de la Grand Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi, and meets Picasso, Braque and Matisse.

1908Hofmann exhibits with the Neue Sezession in Berlin, and again in 1909.

1910Hofmann’s first one-person exhibition is held at Paul Cassirer Gallery, Berlin. He meets and befriends Robert Delaunay, who co-founded the Orphism art movement, known for its use of color and geometric shapes.

1914Hofmann and Miz leave Paris for Corsica, where Hofmann recuperates from what proves to be tuberculosis. An illness of Hofmann’s sister leads them to return to Germany. The outbreak of World War I forces them to remain there. Financial assistance from Phillip Freudenberg ends.

1915Ineligible for the army because of the aftereffects of his lung condition, Hofmann opens the Schule für Bildenes Kunst in Munich, so he can earn a living by teaching.

1918After the war, Hofmann’s school be-comes known abroad and attracts for-eign students. Between 1922 and 1929, he holds summer sessions in Bavaria, Yugoslavia, Italy, and France. He makes frequent trips to Paris. He has little time to paint, but he draws continually.

1924Hofmann marries Miz Wolfegg.

1930At the invitation of former student Worth Ryder, Hofmann teaches a summer session at the University of California, Berkeley, where Ryder is an associate professor in the Department of Art. Hofmann returns to Munich for the winter.

1931In the spring, he teaches at the Chouinard School of Art, Los Angeles, and again at Berkeley in the summer. He exhibits drawings at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco—his first one-person exhibition in the United States.

CHRONOLOGY

60

Clockwise:Clement Greenberg, Fritz Bultman, David Smith, Miz and Hans Hofmann, Provincetown, summer of 1959

1932He returns to the Chouinard School of Art in the summer. Advised by Miz not to return to Munich because of growing political hostility toward intellectuals in Germany, Hofmann settles in New York. Former student Vaclav Vytlacil helps arrange a teaching position at The Art Students League of New York.

1933Hofmann spends the summer as a guest instructor at the Thurn School of Art in Gloucester, Mass. In the fall, he opens a school in New York at 444 Madison Avenue and begins to paint again.

1934Upon the expiration of his visa, Hofmann travels to Bermuda, where he stays for several months before returning to the United States with a permanent visa. He teaches again at the Thurn School of Art and opens the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts at 137 East 57th Street in New York.

1935Hofmann opens a summer school in Provincetown, Mass.

1936Hofmann moves his school to 52 West 9th Street in New York.

1938The Hofmann School moves again, to 52 West 8th Street, its permanent home in New York until 1958. Hofmann’s lecture series at the school in the winter of 1938-39 is attended by such figures as Arshile Gorky and Clement Greenberg.

1939Miz Hofmann arrives in America and joins her husband in Provincetown. From that year on, they spend five months each summer in Provincetown and the rest of the year in New York.

1941Hofmann becomes an American citizen. He delivers an address at the annual meeting of American Abstract Artists at the Riverside Museum and also has a solo exhibition at the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans.

1942Lee Krasner, formerly a Hofmann student, introduces him to Jackson Pollock.

1944Hofmann has his first exhibition in New York at Peggy Guggenheim’s The Art of This Century Gallery. Hans Hofmann, Paintings 1941-1944 opens at The Arts Club of Chicago and travels to the Milwaukee Art Institute. Hofmann’s paintings are included in Forty American Moderns at 67 Gallery and Abstract and Surrealist Art in America at the Mortimer Brandt Gallery (arranged by Sidney Janis in conjunction with the publication of Janis’ book of the same title) in New York. Hofmann meets the critic Clement Greenberg, and his close friendship with the author and critic Harold Rosenberg begins.

1945Hofmann is included in Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He is included in all subsequent Whitney painting annuals during his lifetime.

1947Hofmann exhibits at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. He begins to exhibit with the Kootz Gallery, New York, which would hold a one-person show of Hofmann’s work each year (except 1948 and 1956) until the artist’s death.

1948There is a retrospective exhibition of Hofmann’s work at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass., in conjunction with the publication of his book The Search for the Real and Other Essays.

1949Hofmann travels to Paris to attend the opening of his exhibition at the Galerie Maeght and visits the studios of Picasso, Braque, Brancusi and Miró. He helps Fritz Bultman and Weldon Kees organize Forum 49, a summer series of lectures, panels and exhibitions at Gallery 200 in Provincetown.

61

1950Hofmann participates in a three-day symposium at Studio 35 with William Baziotes, James Brooks, Willem de Kooning, Herbert Ferber, Theodoros Stamos, David Smith and Bradley Walker Tomlin. He joins the “Irascibles,” a group of Abstract Expressionist artists in an open letter protesting the exclusion of the avant-garde from an upcoming exhibition of American art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

1951Hofmann juries the 60th Annual American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago with Aline Louchheim and Peter Blume.

1954Hofmann has a solo exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

1955Clement Greenberg organizes a small retrospective of Hofmann’s paintings at Bennington College in Vermont.

1956Hofmann designs mosaic murals for the lobby of the new William Kaufmann Building, 711 Third Avenue, New York. A retrospective is held at the Art Alliance in Philadelphia.

1957A retrospective exhibition is held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. It travels to Des Moines, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Utica and Baltimore.

1958Hofmann ceases teaching to devote himself full-time to painting. He moves his studios into his former New York and Provincetown schools. He completes a mosaic mural for the exterior of the New York School of Printing at 439 West 49th Street.

1960Hofmann represents the United States, along with Philip Guston, Franz Kline, and Theodore Roszac, at the XXX Venice Biennale.

1962A retrospective exhibition opens at the Frankische Galerie am Marientor, Nuremburg, Germany, and travels to Cologne, Berlin and Munich. The exhibition Oils on Paper 1961-1962 opens in Munich. Hofmann is awarded honorary membership in the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Nuremberg and an honorary doctor of fine arts degree by Dartmouth College.

1963Miz Hofmann dies. A retrospective exhibition, Hans Hofmann and His Students, organized by William Seitz under the auspices of The Museum of Modern Art, travels throughout the United States, South America, and Europe. Hofmann signs an agreement to donate forty-five paintings to the University of California, Berkeley, and to fund the construction of a gallery in his honor at the University’s new museum, then in the planning stage.

1964Hofmann receives an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Solomon Guggenheim International Award. He becomes a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York. Renate Schmitz inspires “The Renate Series.”

1965Hofmann is awarded an honorary doctor of fine arts degree by Pratt Institute, New York. He marries Renate Schmitz and completes “The Renate Series.”

1966Hofmann’s final exhibition at the Kootz Gallery, New York, opens on 1 February. He dies on 17 February in New York. His exhibition at Kootz closes 26 February.

Courtesy, the Hans Hofmann Catalogue Raisonné Project

62

1908Berlin: Neue Sezession.

1909Berlin: Neue Sezession.

1910Berlin: Paul Cassirer Galerie, Hofmann—Kokoschka.

1931Berkeley, Calif.: University of California,

Berkeley (July).San Francisco: California Palace of the Legion

of Honor (August).

1941New Orleans: Isaac Delgado Museum of Art,

Hans Hofmann (March).

1944Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, Abstract

and Surrealist Art in the United States (8 February–12 March). Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art. Traveled to Denver Art Museum (26 March–23 April), Seattle Art Museum (7 May–10 June), Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, Calif. (June–July), San Francisco Museum of Art (July).

New York: Art of This Century Gallery, First Exhibition: Hans Hofmann (7–31 March).

Chicago: The Arts Club of Chicago, Hans Hofmann, Paintings 1941–1944 (3–25 November).

New York: Mortimer Brandt Gallery, Abstract and Surrealist Art in America (29 November–30 December).

New York: 67 Gallery, Forty American Moderns (December).

1945Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Institute, Hans

Hofmann (1–14 January).New York: 67 Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Recent

Works (14 April–10 May).San Francisco: California Palace of the Legion

of Honor, Contemporary American Paintings (17 May–17 June).

New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1945 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting (27 November–10 January 1946).

1946Hollywood: American Contemporary Gallery,

Hans Hofmann (14 May–10 June).

1947Andover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American Art,

Seeing the Unseeable (22 January–3 March).Dallas: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Hans

Hofmann: Space Paintings (February). Traveled to the Art Department of the Texas State College for Women, Denton (6 March– 3 April), University of Oklahoma, Norman (15–30 April), Memphis Academy of Arts, Memphis, Tenn. (May–June).

New York: Betty Parsons Gallery, Hans Hofmann (24 March–12 April).

Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 58th Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture (6 November–11 January 1948).

New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann (23 November–13 December).

New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1947 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Painting (6 December–25 January 1948).

1948Andover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American

Art, Hans Hofmann: Painter and Teacher (2 January–9 February).

1949Paris: Galerie Maeght, Hans Hofmann, Peintures

(January).New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann

(14 September–3 October).New York: Kootz Gallery, The Intrasubjectives

(14 September–3 October).New York: Kootz Gallery, Recent Paintings by

Hans Hofmann (15 November–5 December).

1950New York: Kootz Gallery, The Muralist and the

Modern Architect (3–23 October).New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: New

Paintings (24 October–13 November).

1951Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine

Arts, 146th Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture (21 January-25 February).

New York: The Museum of Modern Art, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America (23 January–25 March).

New York: 60 East 9th Street, 9th Street Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture (21 May–10 June).

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 40 Ameri-can Painters, 1940–1950 (4 June–30 August).

New York: Kootz Gallery, New Paintings by Hans Hofmann (13 November–1 December).

New York: Sidney Janis Gallery, American Van-guard Art for Paris Exhibition (26 December–5 January 1952). Traveled to the Galerie de France, Paris (26 February–15 March 1952).

1952Buffalo, N.Y.: Albright Art Gallery, Expressionism

in American Painting (10 May–29 June).New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Recent

Paintings (28 October–22 November).

1953New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: The

First Showing of Landscapes Created From 1936–39 (27 April–20 May).

New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: New Paintings Created in 1953 (16 November–12 December).

1954New York: Sidney Janis Gallery, Nine American

Painters Today (4–23 January).Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, Paintings

by Hans Hofmann (5 October–21 November).Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, Sixty-first

American Exhibition Paintings and Sculpture (21 October-5 December).

New York: Kootz Gallery, Hofmann New Paintings (15 November–11 December).

1955Bennington, Vt.: Bennington College, A Retrospective

Exhibition of the Paintings of Hans Hofmann (May).New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: New

Paintings (7 November–3 December).

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

A Retrospective of Hans Hofmann, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1957

63

1957New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: New

Paintings (7–26 January).New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, A

Retrospective Exhibition of Hans Hofmann (24 April–16 June). Traveled to Des Moines Art Cen-ter, Des Moines, Iowa (4 July–4 August), San Fran-cisco Museum of Art (21 August–22 September), Art Galleries of the University of California, Los Angeles (6 October–4 November), Seattle Art Museum (11 December–12 January 1958), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (7 February–11 March 1958), Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts In-stitute, Utica, N.Y. (28 March–30 April 1958), Bal-timore Museum of Art (16 May–17 June 1958).

1958New York: Kootz Gallery, New Paintings by Hans

Hofmann (7–25 January).Venice, Italy: Venice Biennale, XXIV Esposizione

Biennale Internazionale d’Arte Venezia (1958). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, Na-

ture in Abstraction: The Relation of Abstract Paint-ing and Sculpture to Nature in Twentieth Century American Art, 14 January–16 March. Traveled to The Phillips Gallery, Washington (2 April–4 May), Fort Worth Art Center, Fort Worth, Texas (2–29 June), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (16 July–24 August), San Francisco Museum of Art (10 Sep-tember–12 October), Walker Art Center, Minneap-olis (29 October–14 December), City Art Museum of St. Louis (7 January 1959–8 February 1959).

1959New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann:

Paintings of 1958 (6–17 January).New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Early

Paintings curated by Clement Greenberg (20–31 January).

Kassel, Germany: Museum Fridericianum, Documenta II (11 July–11 October).

1960New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann,

Paintings of 1959 (5–23 January).Munich: Stådtische Galerie, Neue Malerei: Form,

Struktur, Bedeutung (10 June–28 August).Venice, Italy: XXX Venice Biennale, Stati Uniti

d’America-Quattro Artisti Americani: Guston, Hofmann, Kline, Roszak (June–October).

Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Arte Moderna, Palacio de las Bellas Artes, Il Bienal Interamericana (5 September–5 November).

1961New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann

(7–25 March).New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,

American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists (13 October–31 December).

1962Caracas, Venezuela: Museo de Bellas Artes,

Dibujos acuarelas abstractos USA (January). Traveled under the auspices of the International Council of The Museum of Modern Art to Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (March).

New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: New Paintings (2–20 January).

Munich: Neue Galerie im Kunstlerhaus, Oils on Paper, 1961–1962 (March).

New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, Geometric Abstraction in America (20 March–13 May).

Nuremberg, Germany: Fränkische Galerie am Marientor, Hans Hofmann (March). Traveled to Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany; Kongresshalle, Berlin; and Stådtischen Galerie, Munich.

Hanover, N.H.: Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Paintings by Hans Hofmann (8–30 November).

1963Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 66th

Annual American Exhibition: Directions in Contemporary Painting and Sculpture (11 January–10 February).

Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Paintings by Hans Hofmann (1–24 February).

New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann (5–23 March).

Paris: Galerie Anderson-Mayer, Oils on Paper(23 April–18 May).

Denver: International House, Hans Hofmann and His Students (6 May–May 27). Organized under the auspices of The Museum of Modern Art and traveled to Michigan State University, East Lansing (1–22 July), Akron Art Institute, Akron, Ohio (2–28 September), Indiana University, Bloomington (11 October– 2 November), Auburn University, Auburn, Ala. (18 November–9 December), Hunter Gallery of Art, Chattanooga, Tenn. (2–23 January 1964), Richmond Artists Association, Richmond, Va. (9 February–1 March 1964),

1963 (cont.) University of North Carolina, Greensboro (17 March–7 April 1964), Ohio University, Athens (21 April–12 May 1964), University of South Florida, Tampa (1–22 June 1964), Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine (18 September–13 October 1964), State University College, Oswego, N.Y. (26 October–16 November 1964), Ackland Memorial Art Center, Chapel Hill, N.C. (5–26 January 1965), Goucher College, Towson, Md. (8 February–1 March 1965), Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery, University of Florida, Coral Gables (17 March–7 April 1965).

New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Twentieth-Century Master Drawings (6 November–5 January 1964). Traveled to University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (3 February–15 March), and Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (6 April–24 May).

1964New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann:

Paintings, 1963 (18 February–7 March).Berkeley, Calif.: University Art Museum, University

of California, Berkeley, Recent Gifts and Loan of Paintings by Hans Hofmann (2 April–3 May).

Copenhagen: American Art Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Oils (18 April–9 May).

London: Tate Gallery, Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954/1964 (22 April–28 June).

Washington: Art: USA: The Johnson Collection of Contemporary American Painting (29 December–17 January 1965). Traveled to Philadelphia Museum of Art (1 February–7 March 1965), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (23 March–18 April 1965), Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (30 April–23 May 1965), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (4–27 June 1965), Detroit Institute of Arts (9 July–1 August 1965), Minneapolis Institute of Arts (10 August–5 September 1965), Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana (17 September–10 October 1965), City Art Museum of St. Louis (22 October–14 November 1965), Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (22 November–16 December 1965), Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Neb. (28 January–20 February 1966),

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1964 (cont.) Denver Art Museum (4–27 March 1966), Seattle Art Museum (8 April–1 May 1966), California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco (13 May–5 June 1966), Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego (17 June–10 July 1966), Fort Worth Art Center, Fort Worth, Texas (22 July–14 August 1966), Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa (1–22 September 1966), Tennessee Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tenn. (30 September–23 October 1966), Birmingham Museum of Arts, Birmingham, Ala. (4 November–27 November 1966), Art Gallery of Toronto (December 1966), Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. (January–February 1967), Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Fla. (7 March–9 April 1967), Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, S.C. (21 April–14 May 1967).

1965New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann, 85th

Anniversary: Paintings of 1964 (16 February–6 March).

San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, Colorists 1950–1965 (15 October–21 November).

1966New York: Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann at Kootz

(1–26 February).Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Art Museum, Hans

Hofmann: 21 Paintings From the Collection of the University of California, Berkeley (22 June–17 August).

Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art, Two Decades of American Painting (15 October–27 November). Traveled to Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (June 1967).

1967New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans

Hofmann (21 January–9 February).


Hofmann (6–31 January).Chicago: Richard Gray Gallery, Hans Hofmann,

Paintings (31 January–2 March).New York: Martha Jackson Gallery, New

Acquisitions and Hans Hofmann Works on Paper From the 40’s and 50’s (October).

1969Syracuse, N.Y.: Everson Museum, Hans Hofmann

(20 February–7 April).Toronto: David Mirvish Gallery, Hans Hofmann

(22 March–15 April).


Hofmann: Paintings of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s (3–22 January).

New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries (13 November–February 1971).

London: Waddington Galleries, Hans Hofmann Paintings (9 June-4 July 1970)


Hofmann (9 January–3 February).Montreal: Galerie Godard Lefort, Hans Hofmann

(October 1971).


Hofmann (8–27 January).Chicago: Richard Gray Gallery, Hans Hofmann:

Paintings (February).Cologne, Germany: Onnash Gallery, Hans

Hofmann (Spring).New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans

Hofmann (21 October–16 November).New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

The Renate Series (16–31 October).


Hofmann: 10 Major Works (6–24 January).Washington: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Hans

Hofmann: A Colorist in Black and White (2 June–15 July). Traveled under the auspices of the International Exhibitions Foundation to Museum of Art, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas; Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, Calif.; Wichita State University, Wichita, Kan.

London: Waddington Galleries III, Hans Hofmann Watercolors (10 July–4 August).

New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann Works on Paper (15 September–11 October).


Hofmann Paintings, 1936–40 (5–24 January).New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans

Hofmann: Architectural Projects and Other Works on Paper (9 November–31 December).

1975Santa Ana, Calif.: Bowers Museum, Hans Hofmann:

108 Paintings (15 April–15 May).New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans

Hofmann: A Selection of Late Paintings (17 May–27 June).


Hofmann: The Years 1947–1952 (3–28 April).New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans

Hofmann (25 May–30 June). Washington: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture

Garden, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective Exhibition (14 October–2 January 1977). Traveled to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (4 February–3 April 1977).

1977New York: André Emmerich Gallery,

Provincetown Landscapes, 1934–1945 (8–26 January).

Oxford, England: Museum of Modern Art, Hans Hofmann: The American Years (23 April–29 May). Traveled under the auspices of the United States Information Agency to Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta (May–June).

New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Drawings 1930–1944 (10 December–11 January 1978).

1978Zurich: Galerie André Emmerich, Hans Hofmann:

Bilder und Werke auf Papier (3 February–23 March).


Hofmann: Provincetown Landscapes 1941–1943 (6–31 January).

New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann as Teacher: Drawings by His Students (23 January–4 March). An expanded version of this exhibition traveled to Provincetown Art Association, Provincetown, Mass. (1 August–12 October 1980).

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1979 (cont.)Bern, Germany: Kunstmuseum, Amerikanische

Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (16 February–16 April). Traveled under the auspices of The Museum of Modern Art to Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (19 May–16 July).


Hofmann: Private–Scale Paintings (12 January–6 February).

New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann, Centennial Celebration, Part I: Major Paintings (13 December–13 January 1981).

New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann: The Renate Series (December–January 1981).


Hofmann, Centennial Celebration, Part II: Works on Paper (17 January–14 February).

Munich: Haus der Kunst, Amerikanische Malerei: 1930–1980 (14 November–31 January 1982).


Hofmann: The Late Small Paintings (7–30 January).

Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Miro in America, April 21-June 27, 1982

Edmonton, Alberta: Edmonton Art Gallery, Hans Hofmann, 1880–1966: An Introduction to His Paintings (9 July–5 September).

1983Washington: B.R. Kornblatt Gallery, Hans

Hofmann (20 September–26 October).


Hofmann: Explorations of Major Themes: Pictures on Paper, 1940–1950 (7 January–4 February).

Scottsdale, Ariz.: Yares Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Small Scale Paintings (5–29 February).

1985New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Major

Paintings, 1954–1965 (5–26 January).Fort Worth, Texas: The Fort Worth Art Museum,

Hans Hofmann: Provincetown Paintings and Drawings (15 September–17 November).

Fort Worth, Texas: The Fort Worth Art Museum, Hans Hofmann: The Renate Series (15 September–17 November).


Hofmann, Pictures of Summer: Provincetown, 1941–42 (8 January–8 February).

Baltimore: C. Grimaldis Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Works on Canvas and Paper (5–29 March).

Toronto: Marianne Friedland Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Major Paintings, 1934–1944 (19 April–30 May).

Venice, Italy: Venice Biennale, XLII Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte Venezia, Art e Scienza—Sezione ‘Colore’ (25 June-8 September 1986).

Cologne, Germany: Museum Ludwig, Europe/America (6 September–30 November).

New York: Lever/Meyerson Galleries, Hans Hofmann and His Legacy (15 October–12 December).

Berkeley, Calif.: University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, Hans Hofmann (15 October–15 December).


Hofmann: The Pre-War Years in America (9 January–7 February).

Baltimore: C. Grimaldis Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Works on Paper (5–28 February).

New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann: The Push and Pull of Cubism (23 December–23 January 1988).

1988London: The Tate Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Late

Paintings (2 March–1 May).Toronto: Marianne Friedland Gallery, Hans

Hofmann: Important Paintings and Works on Paper (5–24 November).

1989New York: André Emmerich Gallery, The Post-

War Years: 1945–1949 (12 January–18 February).


Hofmann: Paintings on Paper From the 1940s (6–27 January).

Munich: Galerie Thomas, Hans Hofmann: Gemalde und Aquarelle (10 May–21 July).

New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Works on Paper From the Summer of 1941 (31 May–29 June).

London: Crane Kalman Gallery, Hans Hofmann: A Selection of Paintings and Watercolors (13 June–25 July). Traveled to Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin (September–October) and Galerie Zwirner, Cologne, Germany (November–December).

New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, Hans Hofmann: Retrospective Exhibition (20 June–16 September). Traveled to The Center for the Fine Arts, Miami (23 November–20 January 1991) and the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va. (17 February–14 April).

New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann: The 1950 Chimbote Mural Project (20 December–26 January 1991).

1991New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Projects for

Mosaic Walls (19 October–16 November).

1992Washington: The Phillips Collection, Theme &

Improvisation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde, 1912–1950 (19 September–29 November). Traveled to Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio (12 December–31 January 1993), Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago (13 February–25 April 1993), Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (14 May– 1 August 1993).


Hofmann: Selected Works (7 January–10 February).

1994Boston: Boston University Art Gallery,

Provincetown Prospects: The Work of Hans Hofmann and His Students (22 January–27 February).

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1995Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, Tanzenden

Madchen.Toronto: Drabinsky & Friedland Galleries,

Hans Hofmann: The Provincetown Paintings (October–November).

1996Tokyo: Sezon Museum of Art, Abstract

Expressionism (6 June–14 July). Traveled to Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan (26 July–16 September) and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan (29 September–17 November).

New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Push-Pull (14 November–7 December).

1997Munich: Stådtisches Galerie im Lenbachhaus,

Hans Hofmann: Wunder des Rhythmus und Schonheit des Raumes (23 April–29 June). Traveled to Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (12 September–2 November).

Santa Fe, N.M.: Riva Yares Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Selected Paintings (27 June–30 July).

Berlin: Galerie Haas & Fuchs, Hans Hofmann: Das Spåtwerk (1 October–1 November).

Barcelona, Spain. Museu d’Art Contemporani, Josep Lluis Sert, (3 April–29 June).

1998Leverkusen, Germany: Stådtisches Museum

Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich, Das Informel im Internationalen Kontext (12 January–22 November).

New York: André Emmerich Gallery, Painting in Provincetown: Milton Avery, Hans Hofmann, Jack Tworkov (June–July).

London: Crane Kalman Gallery, Summer Exhibition (2 July–30 August).

1999Barcelona, Spain: Fundación “la Caixa,” Made in

USA, 1940–1970: From Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art (21 January–28 March). Traveled to Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt under the title Between Art & Life: From Expressionism to Pop Art (21 April–4 July).

Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, The Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection of Modern Art (4 March–9 May).

1999 (cont.)New York: Ameringer/Howard Fine Art, Hans

Hofmann: Late Paintings From the Estate (18 March–28 May).

New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann in the Metropolitan (13 April–17 October).

New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York Collects: Drawings and Watercolors 1900–1950 (20 May–29 August).

Roslyn, N.Y.: Nassau County Museum of Art, Contemporary American Masters: The 1960s (13 June–12 September).

Montpellier, France: Musée Fabre, Abstractions Américaines, 1940–1960 (3 July–3 October).

Salzburg, Austria, Galeria Academia Salzburg Residenz, Hans Hofmann: The American Years, Retrospective (July — September 1999).

New York: Spring Studio, Hans Hofmann, Instructional Drawings From 1938 (8 August–30 September).

Livorno, Italy: Galleria Peccolo, Hans Hofmann: Opere da una Collezione, dipinti su carta 1959–1962 (11 September–2 October).

Los Angeles: Manny Silverman Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Works on Paper 1933–1965 (16 September–30 October).

Boca Raton, Fla.: Ameringer/Howard Fine Art, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective Exhibition (11 November–4 December).

New York: Ameringer/Howard Fine Art, Icons (9 December–22 January 2000).

Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Los Surrealistas en el Exilio y los Inicios de la Escuela de Nueva York (14 December–27 February 2000). Traveled to Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France.

2000New York: Ameringer/Howard Fine Art, Hans

Hofmann: The Summer Studio (27 April–10 June).

Provincetown, Mass.: Berta Walker Gallery, Hans Hofmann, The Summer Studio: Provincetown Drawings (21 July–21 August).

Provincetown, Mass.: Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Hans Hofmann: Four Decades in Provincetown (28 July–1 October).

London: Crane Kalman Gallery, Hans Hofmann (7–30 November).

2001San Francisco: John Berggruen Gallery, Hans

Hofmann: Paintings (1 February–3 March).Boca Raton, Fla.: Ameringer/Howard/Yohe Fine

Art, Hans Hofmann: The Summer Studio (8 February–3 March).

New York: Ameringer/Howard/Yohe Fine Art, Hans Hofmann: Retrospective on Paper (26 April–9 June).

Newark, N.J.: The Newark Museum, Picturing America: American Art From the Museum’s Permanent Collection (10 May–10 October).

Portland, Ore.: Portland Art Museum, The Clement Greenberg Collection (14 July–16 September).

Lugano, Switzerland: Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Da Kandinsky a Pollock: La vertigine della non-forma (29 September–6 January).

Roslyn, N.Y.: Nassau County Museum of Art, Twentieth Century Exiles: Artists Fleeing Hitler’s Oppression (18 November–3 February 2002).

2002Venice, Italy: Centro Culturale Caniani: Jackson

Pollock in America/The “Irascibles” and the New York School, a project by Giandomenico Romanelli, Daniela Ferretti and Vicenzo Sanfo, Museo Correr (23 March–30 June).

Champaign, Ill.: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1940 to 1950: The Breakthrough of American Painting (25 April–4 August).

San Francisco: Hackett-Freedman Modern, Hans Hofmann: Evolution/Revolution (2 May–29 June).

San Antonio: Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, Hans Hofmann: Paintings From the 1960s, The Berkeley Museum Collection (10 June–15 September). Traveled to Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Ariz. (5 October–19 January 2003), Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio (20 September 2003–3 January 2004), Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa (21 August 2004–31 October 2004).

Scottsdale, Ariz.: Riva Yares Gallery, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective View, Paintings 1935–1965 (12 October–31 December).

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2003New York: The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf

Art Gallery, Hunter College, Seeing Red: International Exhibition of Nonobjective Painting (30 January–3 May).

New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, Hans Hofmann: Selected Paintings From the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and the Estate of the Artist (11 February–15 March).

Boca Raton, Fla.: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, Hans Hofmann’s Provincetown: Paintings and Works on Paper (13 March–5 April).

Miami Beach, Fla.: Galerie d’Arts Decoratifs, Hans Hofmann Works on Paper (June–August).

Greenwich, Conn.: The Bruce Museum, JFK and Art (20 September–4 January). Traveled to the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Fla. (7 February–2 May 2004).

Naples, Fla.: Naples Museum of Art, Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective, curated by Karen Wilkin (1 November–21 March 2004).

2004West Palm Beach, Fla.: International Pavilion of

the Palm Beaches, Palm Beach Classic (29 January–8 February).

Rockford, Ill.: Rockford Art Museum, Reuniting an Era: Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s (12 November–25 January 2005).

Modena, Italy: Foro Boario, Action Painting. Arte Americana 1940–1970: Dal disengno all’opera, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero (21 November–27 February 2005).

2005New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, Hans

Hofmann: Search for the Real (6 January–12 February).

Beverly Hills, Calif.: Gagosian Gallery, A Time & Place: East and West Coast Abstraction From the ’60s and ’70s (21 July–27 August).

New York: The Painting Center, Hans Hofmann: The Legacy (1 November–24 December).

Nice, France: Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Ecole de New York: Expressionnisme abstrait américain oeuvres sur papier (The New York School: Abstract Expressionism) (8 December 2005–5 March 2006).

2006New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, Hans

Hofmann: The Unabashed Unconscious: Reflections on Hofmann and Surrealism (30 March–29 April).

Portland, OR, Portland Art Museum, Exhibited with the Collection at the Jubitz Center (October 2005-May 2006).

Berkeley, Calif.: Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, The Making of a Modernist: Hans Hofmann (13 October–30 June).

Munich: American Contemporary Art Gallery, Hans Hofmann (December–February 2007).

2007Chicago: KN Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Exuberant

Eye (10 May–June 30).Denver: Denver Art Museum, Color as Field:

American Painting 1950–1975 (9 November–3 February 2008). Organized by the American Federation of Arts and curated by Karen Wilkin. Traveled to Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington (29 February–26 May 2008) and Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tenn, (20 June–21 September 2008).

2008Basel, Switzerland: Fundation Beyeler, Action

Painting: Jackson Pollack (27 January–12 May).New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, Hans

Hofmann: Poems & Paintings on Paper (10 April–23 May).

New York: Robert Miller Gallery, Beyond the Canon: Small Scale American Abstraction 1945–1965 (20 November–3 January 2009).

Vercelli, Italy: Guggenheim a Vercelli, former Church of San Marco, Peggy Guggenheime la Nuova Pittura Americana (21 November–1 March 2009).

2009Waltham, Mass.: The Rose Art Museum of

Brandeis University, Hans Hofmann: Circa 1956 (14 January–5 April). Traveled to The Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, Okla. (21 February– 9 May 2010) and The Weatherspoon Art Museum of The University of North Carolina, Greensboro (3 July–17 October 2010).

Reykjavik, Iceland, Reykjavik Art Museum, From Unuhús to West 8th Street (15 May–30 August).

2009 (cont.) Boston: Acme Fine Art and Design, Days

Lumberyard Studios, Provincetown 1915–1972 (15 May–22 August 2009).

2010New York: Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, Hans

Hofmann: Sketching Along the Road (11 March–17 April).

New York: Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Neighbors in a Great Experiment (11 March–17 April).

Düsseldorf, Germany: Museum KunsPalast, From Pollock to Schumacher: Le Grand Gest’ (9 April–1 August).

Wiesbaden, Germany: Museum Wiesbaden, Das Geistige in der Kunst—Vom Blauen Reiter zum Abstrakten Expressionismun (31 October–4 February 2011).

New York: Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, Hans Hofmann: Pictures of Summer: Paintings & Works on Paper (9 December–29 January 2011).

2011New Britain, Conn.: New Britain Museum of

American Art, The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Art Colony (15 July–16 October). Traveling to The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pa. (30 October 1–22 January, 2012), The Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kan. (5 February–29 April 2012), and The Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, Mass. (18 May– 26 August 2012).

Courtesy, the Hans Hofmann Catalogue Raisonné Project

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SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

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Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.

Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Art Institute of Chicago

Art Museum of South Texas, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi

Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colo.

Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

Baltimore Museum of Art

Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley

The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin

Brooklyn Museum

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va.

Chrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark.

Cincinnati Art Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H.

Dallas Museum of Art

Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.

deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Mass.

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Del.

Fundacion Juan March, Madrid

Germanische Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, Germany

Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, S.C.

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution,

Washington

Honolulu Academy of Arts

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.

Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tenn.

Indianapolis Museum of Art

Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Fla.

Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis

Milwaukee Art Museum

Mint Museum, Charlotte, N.C.

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, N.Y.

Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.

Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, France

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

National Gallery of Art, Washington

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The Newark Museum

Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, Calif.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pa.

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Ore.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Ariz.

Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Ky.

Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence

Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

Tate Collection, London

Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kan.

University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass.

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.

MonographsBannard, Walter Darby. Hans Hofmann: A Retrospective Exhibition. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: Washington, and The Museum of Fine Arts: Houston, 1976.

Costa, Xavier, Eric Mumford, Tina Dickey, and Marti Peran. Hans Hofmann: The Chimbote Project: The Synergistic Promise of Modern Art and Urban Architecture. Barcelona: 2004.

Dickey, Tina and Inka Essenhigh, essays. Hans Hofmann: Search for the Real. New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2005.

———. Color Creates Light: Studies With Hans Hofmann. Heriot Bay, British Columbia: Trillistar Books, 2011.

Goodman, Cynthia. Hans Hofmann. New York: Abbeville Press, 1986.

———. Hans Hofmann. Munich: 1990.

Greenberg, Clement. Hans Hofmann. Paris: 1961.

Hunter, Sam. Hans Hofmann. New York; 1963.

Ruthenberg, Peter. Vergessene Bilder: 8 Studenten der ‘Schule für Bildende Kunst, Hans Hofmann,’ München (1915-1932). Berlin and Frankfurt: 1986.

Seitz, William C. Hans Hofmann. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1963.

Wight, Frederick S. Hans Hofmann. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.

Wilkin, Karen. Hans Hofman: A Retrospective. New York: G. Braziller, 2003.

Hunter, Sam, Tina Dickey, and Frank Stella. Hans Hofmann, edited by James Yohe, 1st & 2nd ed. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2002 & 2006.

Texts written by Hans Hofmann“Art in America.” The Art Digest 4 (August 1930): 27.

“Painting and Culture.” As communicated to Glenn Wessels. The Fortnightly 1 (11 September 1931): 5-7.

“On the Aims of Art.” Translated by Ernst Stolz and Glenn Wessels. The Fortnightly 1 (26 February 1932): 7-11.

“Plastic Creation.” Translated by Ludwig Sander. The League. Published by The Art Students League of New York. (Winter 1932-33): 11-51, 21. Reprinted in The League 22 (Winter 1950): 3-6.

“The Search for the Real and Other Essays.” The Search for The Real. Exhibition catalogue edited by Sara T. Weeks and Bartlett H. Hayes Jr. Andover, Mass: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1948. Reprinted by Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983. Includes “The Search for the Real in the Visual Arts,” pp.46-54; “Sculpture,” pp. 55-59; “Painting and Culture,” pp. 60-64; excerpts from the teaching of Hans Hofmann adapted from his essays “On the Aims of Art” and “Plastic Creation,” pp.65-76, 76-78.

Untitled statement in It Is, no. 3 (Winter 1958-Spring 1959): 10.

“Space and Pictorial Life.” It Is, no. 4 (Autumn 1959): 10.

“Hans Hofmann on Art.” Lecture at inauguration of the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College 17 November 1962; published in Art Journal 22 (Spring 1963): 180, 182.

“The Painter and His Problems: A Manual Dedicated to Painting.” Thirty-five page typescript dated 21 March 1963. New York: The Museum of Modern Art Library.

Published interviews with HofmannJaffe, Irma. “A Conversation With Hans Hofmann.” Artforum 9 (January 1971): 34-39.

Kuh, Katherine. The Artist’s Voice: Talks With Seventeen Artists. New York: 1962, pp.118-29.

van Okker, William H. “Visit With a Villager: Hans Hofmann.” Villager (18 March 1965).

Wolf, Ben. “The Digest Interviews Hans Hofmann.” The Art Digest 19 (1 April 1945): 52.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Top to bottom:Hans Hofmann, Search for the Real. Paperback 4th edition and Hardcover 1st edition.William C. Seitz, Hans Hofmann

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Other books and articlesAmerican Contemporary Art Gallery Yearbook 2002/2003. Munich.

Baker, Elizabeth C. “Tales of Hofmann: The Renate Series.” ArtNews 71 (November 1972): 39-41.

Barbero, Luca Massimo, Philip Rylands and Valentina Sonzogni. Peggy Guggenheim e la Nuova Pittura Americana, catalogue for exhibition. Florence and Milan, Italy: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Giunti Arte Mostre Musei, 2008.

Boyle, Richard, Tina Dickey, Michael Taylor, Barbara Wolanin. “From Hawthorne to Hofmann: Provincetown Vignettes, 1899 – 1945,” Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2003.

Bultman, Fritz. “The Achievement of Hans Hofmann.” ArtNews 42 (September 1963): 54.

Coates, Robert. “The Art Galleries, At Home and Abroad.” New Yorker 22 (30 March 1946): 83.

de Kooning, Elaine. “Hans Hofmann Paints a Picture.” ArtNews 48 (February 1950): 38.

Dickey, Tina. Hans Hofmann: Exuberant Eye. Chicago: KN Gallery, 2007

Ellsworth, Paul. “Hans Hofmann, Reply to Questionnaire and Comments on a Recent Exhibition.” Arts and Architecture 66 (November 1949): 22-28, 45-47.

Goodman, Cynthia. “Hans Hofmann as Teacher.” Arts Magazine 53 (April 1979): 22-28.

Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.

Herskvic, Marika, ed. New York School Abstract Expressionists: Artist Choice by Artists. New York: New York School Press, 2000.

Karmel, Pepe, ed. Action Painting: Jackson Pollock. Essays by Gottfried Boehm, Robert Fleck, and Jason Edward Kaufman. Basel,Switzerland: 2008.

Kinkead, Gwen. “The Spectacular Fall and Rise of Hans Hofmann.” ArtNews 79 (Summer 1980): 90.

Kroll, Jack. “Old Man Crazy About Painting.” Newsweek 62 (16 September 1963): 88, 90.

Landau, Ellen G. “The French Sources for Hans Hofmann’s Ideas on the Dynamics of Color-Created Space.” Arts Magazine 51 (October 1976).

Loran, Erle. “Hans Hofmann and His Work.” Artforum 2 (May 1964): 34.

Matter, Mercedes. “Hans Hofmann.” Arts and Architecture 63 (May 1946): 26-28.

Noelle, Alexander J., James R. Bakker, Stephen Borkowski, Robert Bridges, Josephine C. Del Deo. “The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Art Colony, 1899-2011,” New Britain Museum of American Art, 2011.

Perl, Jed. New Art City. New York: Knopf, 2005.

———. The Unabashed Unconscious: Reflections on Hofmann and Surrealism, New York: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, 2006.

Plaskett, J. “Some New Canadian Painters and Their Debt to Hans Hofmann.” Canadian Art 10 (Winter 1953): 59-63.

Pollet, Elizabeth. “Hans Hofmann.” Arts Magazine 31 (May 1957): 30-33.

Riley, Maude. “Hans Hofmann: Teacher-Artist.” The Art Digest 18 (15 March 1944): 13.

Rose, Barbara. “Hans Hofmann: From Expressionism to Abstraction.” Arts Magazine 53 (November 1978).

Rosenberg, Harold. “Hans Hofmann’s ‘Life’ Class.” ArtNews 6 (Autumn 1962): 16-31, 110-15.

———. “Teaching of Hans Hofmann.” Arts Magazine 45 (December 1970): 17-19.

Sandler, Irving. The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970.

———. “Hans Hofmann: The Pedagogical Master.” Art in America 61 (May 1973).

———. The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of The Fifties. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.

Schwendener, Martha. “Reviews, Tête-à-Tête.” Time Out: New York (7-13 July 2005).

Seckler, Dorothy Gees. Provincetown Painters: 1890’s-1970’s. Exhibition catalogue from Everson Museum of Art. Syracuse, N.Y.: 1977.

———. “Can Painting Be Taught?” ArtNews 50 (March 1951): 39-40, 63-64.

Willard, Charlotte. “Living in a Painting.” Look 17 (28 July 28 1953): 52-55.

ArchivesArchives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute,

Washington.Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition

15 March–21 April, 2012

Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe 525 West 22nd StreetNew York, NY 10011tel: 212 445 0051www.amy-nyc.com

Essay © 2012 William C. Agee Publication © 2012 Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe All rights reserved

Catalogue designed by Hannah Alderfer, HHA DesignPrinted by Capital Offset, Concord, NHPrinted and bound in the USA

Cover: Hans Hofmann, Laburnum, 1954

Endpapers, verso painting details:front: Seated Woman, Composition No. 1, The Conjurerback: Candor, Splendour, Abstraction in White

Page 1: Hans Hofmann, Munich, ca. 1928

Page 2: Hans Hofmann and students, Hawthorne Studio, Provincetown, Mass., 1940Photo: Maurice Berezov

PhotographyKim Keever: pp.27, 29, 31.Carlin Mayer: pp.15, 23, 33, 37, 47, 57 and all detail images.Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.: pp.19, 39, 40, 41, 43, 49, 53.

All photographs of the artist and exhibitions: © 2012 Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ISBN: 978-0-982-0810-9-9

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