Hans Hofmann
American, born Germany, 1880 - 1966Untitled, 1941
Not on view
Gouache, crayon and india ink on paper
Dimensions14 × 17 in. (35.6 × 43.2 cm)
Museum purchase with funds from the Harvey J. Mallery Charitable Trust, 1992.28
Hofmann is unusual in that he made a name for himself first as one of the most influential teachers in the twentieth century and later as an accomplished artist. His life and career spanned much of the century and its major art movements, ranging from exposure to Impressionism as a student to an active participant in the formation of the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic. Early on, he counted among his friends Matisse, Picasso, and Braque. The influence of Matisse and the Fauves and their love of striking, bold color is something that stayed with Hofmann and defined his work throughout his career.
Nature remained his source of inspiration, but color was the vehicle to transform the experience of nature. “Color (in nature as well as in the picture) is an agent to give the highest aesthetic enjoyment,” he once wrote. Untitled, an early work on paper, is an example not only of Hofmann's struggle to work through Cubism, but of his transformation of the experience of nature to an abstracted image.
