Hans Hofmann
German, 1880-1966 (active America)

Simplex Munditis, 1962
oil on canvas
84 x 72 in.

SBMA, Gift from artist and his wife
1962.42



Hans Hofmann, Self Portrait with Brushes, 1942

"A picture should be made with feeling not with knowing. The possibilities of the medium must be sensed. Anything can serve as a medium - kerosene, benzene, turpentine, linseed oil, beeswax ... even beer." - Hans Hofmann

RESEARCH PAPER

This large abstract painting contains large rectangular fields of vivid colors: strong blues, greens, chartreuses, pinks, and juxtaposed one against the other. The color fields, varying in size, are placed on a scumbled, fuzzy, muted background. The less distinct areas are found in the upper left and right lower corners, while the center and lower left corner are bordered with pristine, hard-edged lines. The arrangement invites the eye to move from upper right to lower right, however, on the whole, the impression is of an overall precise linearity. The paint, applied by brush and palette knife, is done so with great authority and force. In some areas the canvas appears to have served as the palette, with the paint incompletely mixed. In other areas the colors are pure or carefully modulated. The large color areas glow almost as if being lit from behind. The bold brush strokes are so textural, that one can feel the painting visually. The most powerful effect of this painting comes from his use of color. A “push-pull” effect is created by their juxtaposition, warm against cool, light against dark and strong against weak. His work couples an emotional, spontaneity of means within a very rational, intellectual framework.

Hofmann was born to a bourgeois family in Weissenburg, Bavaria. He showed an early aptitude for the sciences, however, at 18, turned his attention to art. Formative years as an artist, beginning in 1904, were spent in Paris where he was most impressed by the work of the Cubists. He greatly admired Cézanne and was friendly with Matisse, Picasso and Gris, however he owed most to Delaunay, who showed him the expressive force of color. By the time he returned to Munich in 1914, his work was characterized with a Teutonic discipline in structure and spatial organization and a French delight in the sensuous aspects of color and paint. In 1915, he opened his own art academy in Munich where he soon became popular as a gifted teacher. He developed a theoretical basis for his abstractions, emphasizing the inherent qualities of the medium of paint on canvas and the dynamics and tensions created by basic elements of color, line, shape, and texture.

Partly on the basis of his extensive writing on a new theoretical basis for art, as well as his reputation as a great teacher-artist, he was invited to the University of California at Berkeley in 1930. As a result of this first stay and also because conditions in Germany were changing rapidly for the worse, Hofmann emigrated to this country in 1933 and took up residence in New York City, where he opened another school. He continued to teach there until 1958, transmitting his ideas to countless students, among them a number who were to become prominent Abstract Expressionists on their own. He continued to paint throughout this period although his work didn’t really come into the consciousness of the art public until the end of the 1940’s. By the time of his death his oeuvre contained over 1,500 paintings.

Simplex Munditis, painted in 1962, is an excellent example of his mature style. The title provides a clue to the man himself. “Simplex”, according to Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary, stands for being morally straightforward, or guileless. Munditis means neatness, clean and elegant style. Donald Brewer, past Director of the La Jolla Art Museum describes Hofmann’s work as follows, “Although Mr. Hofmann has mastered form and color, and his painting cannot only be visually interpreted as formal creations. Human warmth, joy, affirmation of the human spirit—that is the message of his work.”

Bibliography:
Books:
Hans Hofmann, Hans Hofmann, Five Essays (Harvey N. Abrams, Inc., New York)
Essays:
Hans Hofmann, ”Painting and Culture”, Search for the Real, edited by Sarah weeks and Bartlett A. Hayes Jr., 1948
Exhibition Catalogs:
Hans Hofmann, An Exhibition, Feingarten Galleries, Beverly Hills, May 196l
Hans Hofmann, Twenty-one Paintings from the Collection of the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, June-August, 1966
Hans Hofmann, Paintings of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, Andre Emmerich Gallery, Inc., New York, January, 1970

Prepared by provisional docent, Joanne Rapp, no date

POSTSCRIPT

HOFMANN and the NEXT GENERATION

German artist Hans Hofmann arrived in the United States in 1930 to teach a summer painting course at UC Bekeley; he returned in 1931 and then again in 1932, and stayed for the rest of his life. Over the next three decades, he established himself as one of American art's most important figures - a teacher and mentor to countless young artists through his schools in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts, and a major abstract painter in his own right. With his diverse and talented following of students - among them Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Ray Eames, Louise Nevelson, and Marisol Escobar - Hofmann helped shape American art for generations.

Trained in Paris and Berlin, in the U.S. Hofmann helped bridge European and American modernism. ln his own works, he pursued a novel form of abstraction, advocating a “push and pull" technique, in which colors, forms. and shapes float forward or recede, consciously interacting. "Painting to me,"Hofmann said, "means forming with color." Avoiding traditional means of creating depth, such as one-point perspective, he experimented with layering, creating bold color combinations and formal contrasts that transcended genre and style.

- Wall Text, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2018

COMMENTS

HANS HOFMANN 1880 – 1966

Artist Frank Stella sang his praises in his American Heritage magazine essay, “The Artist of the Century.” Students in America’s art schools today are reaping what he sowed through his 40 years of teaching. Artists around the world employ his color theories.

Through his own vibrant paintings and his pioneering teachings, Hans Hofmann has inspired generations.

Hans Hofmann, son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann, was born in Weissenburg, Bavaria on March 21st, 1880. When he was six years old, the family moved to Munich where his father took a job working with the government. Hofmann developed an interest in mathematics, science, music and art at a very early age. When he was sixteen, his father helped him obtain a job with the Bavarian government as the assistant to the director of Public Works. During this time, Hofmann further developed his technical knowledge of mathematics, even inventing and patenting an electromagnetic comptometer. Despite his exceptional gift or science, however, Hofmann soon gravitated towards the arts, and began his formal art training after his father passed away in the late 1800s.

In 1898, Hofmann studied at Moritz Heymann’s art school in Munich. It was there that Hofmann was introduced to Impressionism and Pointillism, the burgeoning new art movements of the time. Early works (such as a 1902 portrait of Hofmann’s future wife, Maria (Miz) Wolfegg) show the influence these popular modes of painting had on the young artist; they also demonstrate his tremendous promise as an artist. Indeed, Hofmann showed so much potential that one of his instructors, Willi Schwartz, suggested that he travel to France to continue his studies. In 1904, with the financial support of Berlin art patron Phillip Freudenberg, Hofmann relocated to the center of all new developments in art: Paris.

Miz later joined him, and the two lived in Paris for ten years during one of the most revolutionary periods in the history of Western art. Continuing his exploration at both the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere and the Academie Colarossi, Hofmann befriended many of the leaders of the Modernist movement. He also frequented the Café du Dome, a haunt of many artists and writers of the French avant-garde. There he became acquainted with pioneers like Matisse, Picasso and Bracques. His closest and perhaps most influential friendship was with Robert Delaunay, who, together with his wife Sonia, launched a mini-movement known as Orphism, or Organic Cubism. The Delaunay’s approach, with its emphasis on color over form, clearly made an impression on Hofmann. Both he and Miz helped design scarves for Sonia Delaunay’s Cubist fashions, and eventually Hofmann began to form his own color and composition theories, which he continued to develop and write about throughout his lifetime and later passed on to his many students.

In 1908 and 1909, Hofmann exhibited his work with the New Secession in Berlin. Soon after, where Hans could recover from a brush with tuberculosis. They then moved back to Germany to look after his ill sister, during which time the war broke out in Europe. Because of his German citizenship, Hofmann was not allowed to return to Paris and due to his lung condition he was disqualified from the army. Thus, he remained in Munich during the First World War and opened the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in the spring of 1915. The school gained recognition worldwide when the war ended, and summer sessions in Capri, St. Tropez and Bavaria attracted many foreign students. Glenn Wessels, Louise Nevelson, Carl Holty, Alfred Jensen and Worth Ryder were among Hofmann’s students at this time, and many of them stayed in touch with Hofmann over the years. In 1930, Worth Ryder invited Hofmann to teach a summer session at the University of California at Berkeley where he was the chairman of the Department of Art. This was the beginning of a meaningful long-term relationship between Hofmann and U.C. Berkeley, culminating years later in a special arrangement: Hofmann donated 45 paintings to the University on the condition that the school promise to construct an art museum on campus.

In the spring of 1931, Hofmann returned to California to teach at the Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles, and then resumed summer courses at Berkeley. Though he had little time to paint, he still managed to draw as much as possible, and he took advantage of the California climate and landscape to continue his artistic exploration of nature. His first public exhibition in the United States was held that year at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels created the Reichs Kammerce (Reich Chambers) for film, music, radio, broadcasting, press, theater and fine arts. The Reichs Kammerce carefully monitored the cultural details of German life, and procedures were established to deem what was acceptable expression and what was not. With hostility mounting towards intellectuals in Germany, Miz advised Hans not to return to Munich. In 1932 he settled in New York City, where he taught at the Art Students League on 57th Street.

In 1933, Hofmann opened the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts at 444 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Over the next few years, though the school would relocate several times, its reputation continued to spread. Art students from all over North America heard of the unique teacher from Europe who imparted to American students what he had learned from Picasso, Braque, Matisse and Delaunay. He became known as an instructor who allowed his students to explore and experiment with their own technique while still encouraging them to take their visual cues from the natural world surrounding them.

A summer school was opened in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1934, and Hofmann divided his time between the city and the coast. He thoroughly enjoyed being outdoors in nature, and after a prolonged period of only drawing, he finally began to paint again. In 1939 Miz joined him in America, and two years later he became an American citizen. Hofmann continued to teach in New York and Provincetown for the next twenty-eight years.

During the 30s, 40s, and 50s, Hofmann’s dual role as teacher and artist would prove challenging for him. He remarked, “Being an artist and being a teacher are two conflicting things. When I paint, I improvise… I deny theory and method and rely only on empathy and feeling… In teaching, it is just the opposite, I must account for every line, shape and color. One is forced to explain the inexplicable.” Nevertheless, he was an enormously generous teacher, and despite his broken English (which was often peppered with German and French), he was a wonderfully expressive and attentive presence in the classroom. He gave his students one-on-one critiques, often drawing a tiny composition of his own in the corner of their works to illustrate one of his points. Theories of the “push and pull” of color and of breaking up the picture plane are still being disseminated by art teachers all over the world.

It wasn’t until late in Hofmann’s career that his reputation as an artist finally began to catch up with his reputation as a teacher. At the age of 64, Hofmann’s first exhibition in New York was organized by Peggy Guggenheim and held at the Art of This Century Gallery. In 1949 he returned to Paris for the opening of his exhibition at the Galerie Maeght. During his visit, he returned to the studios of his contemporaries, Picasso, Braque, Brancusi and Miro. In 1955, Clement Greenberg organized a retrospective of Hofmann’s work at Bennington College, and in 1957 there was a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York.

In spite of his growing recognition as a painter, it wasn’t until 1958, at the age of 78, that Hofmann was finally able to resign as a teacher and devote himself fully to his art. Though a generation older than Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorki, Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning, Hofmann took his place as a major and influential member of this thoroughly American art movement.

In 1960, Hofmann was one of four artists representing the United States at the Venice Biennale, and three years later a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art traveled throughout the United States and internationally to South America and Europe. Lowery Sims, who curated Hofmann’s 1999 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum, says of the artist’s late bloom, “Hans Hofmann came into his own in the 1950s and 60s when he’s in his seventies and eighties… It sort of defies the notion that creativity is only the province of the young. He’s a really great example for people to understand that creativity is a lifelong promise.”

Three years later, Miz Hofmann died suddenly. Hofmann painted “Paz Vobiscom” in her memory and continued to paint magnificent major works. In 1965, Hofmann married a young German woman, Renate, and painted a loving, glowing series of masterworks dedicated to her, which are now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On February 17, 1966 Hofmann died at the age of 86. On his easel was another painting, almost finished, dedicated to Renate.

Retrospectives and exhibitions continue to this day, and his work is in permanent collections in galleries and museums from New York to New Zealand.

http://www.pbs.org/hanshofmann/images/design/biography_image.jpg
Website preparation done by Gay Collins, SBMA docent, February 2004

SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

Hans Hofmann played a major role in the development of abstract painting in the United States from the 1930s through the 1950s not only as an artist, but also as a theorist and teacher. "Simplex Munditis" demonstrates the artist’s experimental approach to color and form. Hofmann painted quickly and aggressively in thick impasto, often mixing his pigments with unusual materials, such as kerosene and beeswax. Not limited to the brush, he often applied paint expressively with his hands, cloth, or palette knives, while maintaining deliberate control over the image. Through these techniques, Hofmann gave each color a distinct materiality that heightens its bold contrast in relationship to one another.

- Ridley-Tree Rotation, 2018