A retrospective exhibition o.f the paintings o.f
HANS HOFMANN
Bennington College Symposium on Art and Music HANS HOFMANN ofmann, born in 1880, was brought up in Munich, and H music and mechanical science were the first interests of his adolescence. But at eighteen he began to paint and 0 ver the past fifteen years a body of painting has immediately entered art school, attending several different emerged in this country that deserves to be called major. ones until he was twenty-three. The teacher from whom Hans Hofmann's art and teaching have been one of its main he learned most was Willi Schwarz, one of the better German fountainheads of style. The value of his art is, however, Impressionists of that time, and it was through Schwarz that independent of its function as an influence. If art critics Hofmann came to the notice of Philip Freudenberg, a Berlin and art bureaucrats in general have tended to overlook this, department-store owner and art collector. In 1904 Freud- it is because their taste cannot solve Hofmann 's difficult enberg's patronage enabled him to go to Paris, where he originality. stayed for ten years. Then there is the multiplicity of directions he paints in. In Paris, Hofmann went through the Fauve and the It would be easier to cope with his originality were it easier Cubist movements as a close and friendly witness, if not to follow connectedly the qualities that embody it. The participant. Although Matisse's color was the major checkered variety of work at his exhibitions deprives the revelation for him, Cubism made an equally profound im- spectator of a cumulative impression. Moreover, the pression and, as he himself puts it, he had to "sweat out" artist who does not stick consistently to one manner, over Cubism over the next quarter-century, until he was able even a short span of time, lays himself open to the charge of to turn it against itself in the interests of his own temper- intellectuality, of being too much concerned with problems ament. Few people have absorbed Cubism as thoroughly as for their own technical sake. Klee, who is held up as the Hofmann has, and even fewer are as well able to convey its epitome of the inspired artist, did not stick to a single gist to others. A good deal of the credit is bis for the fact manner either at any time during his maturity, and, too, was that the American "abstract expressionists" could from the a teacher who liked to formulate his thoughts on art. None- first take Cubism for granted as a necessary discipline on the theless he was not accused of being too intellectual. The way to a grand-s tyle abstract art. charge is no more warranted in Hofmann 's case. The outbreak of the 191 4 war found Hofmann home on Another element of difficult originality in his painting vacation in Germany, and cut him off from France. It also lies in what might be called its dissonant color contrasts. cut off his stipend from Freudenberg. Kept out of the army Colors are still opposed in terms of dark and light, but not by the after-effects of a lung ailment, he opened an art in those of warmth and coolness; rather, they are usually school in Munich in 1915 in order to support himself. The kept warm throughout. Because blue and green, for ex- school was a success from the first. In time Hofmann be- ample, are inherently cool colors, a discord is created when came a great teacher, though the fruits of his teaching have they are used in warm shades as a foil to inherently warm until now been realized more in a general influence on tas te colors like red and orange; instead of giving the eye the cool and practice than in the actual artistic achievements of his relief it expects from them, they tax it further by sustaining former students. More than a few of the latter now hold the warmth-much the way unresolved chords tax the ear. important posts in art schools, universities, and other ed- This goes against a rule of painting so implicit that we be- ucational institutions here and in Europe. come aware of it as a rule only when it is violated. The Hofmann 's school continued to be a success after the war, Fauves, fifty years ago, were the first to break it with any attracting many students from outside Germany. And in consistency; Hofmann does so more radically, and this is 1930 he accepted an invitation from the University of Cal- why his color often seems to scream. With time, however, ifornia in Berkeley to teach at its summer session. He came one's eyes become attuned. again from Germany- this time for good- for the summer As important as color is in Hofmann 's art, his pictures, session of 1931 , and during that same summer he also taught like all other pictures, stand or fall just as much by their at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los AngeleE. The winter design. Here again we meet with a kind of dissonance. His of 1931-32saw him teaching at the Art Students League in swift, rather machined line leads the eye to ex pect something New York, and the summers of 1933 and 1934 at the Thurn different from the rugged, monumental composition it will School in Gloucester. M eanwhile, in the fall of 1932 he often point up. Equally surprising is the crisp design he had re-opened his own art school, in N ew York. In i934 can achieve working with coils of paint squeezed on the he started his summer school in Provincetown, since which canvas or panel directly from the tube. In either case, time he has spent five months of every year there. however, the seeming discord between means and end is Hofmann's first one-man show in New York was held resolved in a final harmony that, as with all profoundly new at Peggy Guggenheim 's Art of This Century ga ll ery in art, we perceive only when we have broken with old habits M arch, 1944and was one of the occasions that mark ed the of sensibility. public beginnings of "abstract expressionism. " At that time Hofmann was just sixty,four, and be bas shown in occasionally on a model in nature to start a picture. For that New York every year since- but not as a "grand old man," matter, he has never, for himself, acknowledged any clear, rather as an artist with bis reputation to make or break cut dividing line between abstraction and representation. along w ith painters thirty to forty years younger. Some _of Among the things Hofmann had realized by the time he the latter have shown signs of fatigue lately, but Hofmann began to show, was the synthesis of Matisse's color with continues to gain in sureness and power, and bis successful Cubist design which French painting right after the last pictures have, in fact, become more frequent than ever over war made one of its chief aims. He succeeded, however, the last two or three years. where the French failed- and he had already done so long But why did be begin his effective development so late7 before the war. And the result for him was not an eclectic, Part of the reason lies in bis ex perience of Paris before 1914. composite art, but was an organic fusion evincing qualities The leading Fauves and Cubists were more or less Hofmann 's that were new and not foreseeable in either Matisse or own age, but what they were doing at that time confronted Cubism. Subsequently, when his painting became alto, him, the outsider from Germany, as faits accomp1is that gether abstract in appearance, this synthesis became but one seemed to admit his participation only as a follower. This among many elements of bis style, or styles. role his ingrained diffidence as well as equally ingrained pride and independence would not consent to. At the same time, is probably too early to begin deciding which of Hof, Freudenberg's fin ancial support eased him of the pressure to Itmann 's several manners has been the most fruitful. get himself known in order to sell- which, Hofmann him, Nevertheless, one aspect of his art can already be spoken self says, made him a little too unambitious in those days. of as a triumph and contribution which time will not take Then, later on, his school absorbed the best part of his away or even diminish. energies; he was, and still is, a painfully conscientious Klee was the first, consciously, to broach painting as teacher. O nly in this country did teaching begin to inter, matter of addressing oneself to the responsive rather than fere less with the practice of his own art. inert or passive object constituted by a plane surface. H e Hofman had, as it were, to wait for the movements of conceived of painting more as the prodding, pushing, mark, his youth and middle age- Fauvism, Cubism, Constructiv, ing and scoring of a surface than as the inscribing, tracing or ism, Surrealism, N eo,Plasticism, and so on- to leave the scene covering of it. Hofmann found his own way to the same before be could enter it. He had also to overcome his self, approach. In practice even more than in precept, he re- doubt. But this does not mean he produced nothing of veals the picture surface as something alive and needing only value in the years before he began showing. The few to be touched to show its life- as something that quivers to paintings of his I have seen that were executed before 1930- the touch, and throbs and breathes in answer to paint. not to ment ion the drawings- are convincing and alive. This is no hyperbole. Without the help of such a meta, Hofmann himself says that his final evolution began back in phor, it is impossible to understand the active effect of Hof- 1919, with drawings in a Cubist vein to which be continued mann 's paintings, their liveliness of surface. the way they to devote his free time ascetically and obsessively over the animate the air around them. Something of this attitude next fifteen years, abstaining almost entirely from oil. A to the raw material of one's art bas, with Hofmann's help, turning point in this period came in 1927 with a series of spread through American "abstract,expressionist" painting landscape drawings . Another was his arrival in this coun, in general and accounts for the open, pulsating paint sur, try, where, he says, he had the first chance since 1914 to faces that most consistently distinguish it from its French "get back to himself A short while later he began to and German counterparts. work in oil again, painting landscapes and large still,lifes and Some will say that this is really a symptom of American interiors harking back in color to Fauvism and Matisse, and rawness and lack of sophistication. But most of the gen, relying in design on a simplified, personal Cubism. These uinely original painting of the last century and a half has pictures also contained some allusions to Kandinsky 's early struck standard good taste, on first sight, as being too raw in quasi,abstract style, but an originality that overshadows f acture; time alone has done the smoothing and refining. almost every trace of derivation in them is manifested in Hofmann 's art is a microcosm of the process, for as his their billowing, loosely,brushed paint, which declares depth thickly painted pictures dry out, and their colors come and volume exactly, yet at no sacrifice in intensity of color. closer together in key, they become smoother, firmer in their As time went on, the landscapes and the other subjects unity, more traditional in their resonance, and their force were rendered more and more abstractly, but it was only becomes more compatible with elegance. It is perhaps too ayear or so before Hofmann's first New York show that his soon for the standard good taste of our time to see this, but painting took on an outspokenly abstract appearance. it will surely do so when Hofmann's pictures have dried (Curiously enough, many of his students became abstract figuratively as well as literally. artists long before he did.) And even today he relies Clement Greenberg title date
l. ATELIER III 1938
2. SPHERIC RELATION (WHITE) 1954
3. DELIGHT 1947
4. SUMMER GLORY 1944
5. BLUE ENCHANTMENT 1951
6. PHOENIX II 1946
7. THE KING 1944
8. CONJURER 1946
9. EFFERVESCENCE 1944
10. FAIRY TALE 1944
11. LIEBESBAUM 1954
12. RED SPIRAL 1955
1.3. UNDULATING EXPANSE 1955
14. LE GILOTIN 1953
1.5. PERPETUITA 1951
16. LIBATION 1947 17. SCINTILLA TING SPACE 1954
18. COMPOSITION J/ 3 - 1953 1953 19. COMPOSITION f/ l - 1953 1953
20. THE SUN 1952
21. HERALD 1951
22. SCOTCH AND BURGUNDY 1951
Painti ngs num bered 1 through i6 are not for sale.
Prices for numbers 17 through 22 will be given on request. The painting entitled Libatio11 , which is reproduced on the cover of this folder, is from the coll ection of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel M . Kootz. Bennington College ack nowledges with thanks the help of Mrs. Hans Hofm ann and of the Samuel M. Kootz Gallery in the preparation of this exhibition.