1940-49 / Rhythm and Composition
The spontaneous and calligraphic methods of surrealist automatism are particularly evident in Hofmann’s paintings of the early 1940s. Rather than as a means of exploring the unconscious, Hofmann used surrealist techniques to free color and form, ultimately with the aim of transforming individual expression.”
Citation
Barnes, Lucinda, et al. Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction. University of California Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, 2019, pp. 25-26.
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Audio Transcript:
"To me, painting means Forming with color. The color development produces ‘the Form’ of the composition. There is a precise psychological meaning in the color, ‘an absolute’ in the development toward such a meaning by which painting becomes poetry.”
Hans Hofmann, 1949
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Audio Transcription:
The medium of expression is the picture plane, the means for its vitalization are color and light integrated into planes. Form develops its power through the creation of space unity. Color develops its power through the creation of light unity. . . . We perceive [three-dimensionality] in the movement and tension relation of the form and in the movement and tension relation of the color which is expressed in intervals, complimentary relations, contrasts and color complexes. From this the life of the composition becomes a spiritual reality.”
—Hans Hofmann, 1931
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Audio Transcription:
The highest in art is the irrational . . . incited by reality, imagination bursts into passion the potential inner life of a chosen medium. The final image resulting from it expresses the all of oneself.
—Hans Hofmann, 1944
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Audio Transcript:
Artistic creation is the metamorphosis of the external physical aspects of a thing into a self-sustaining spiritual reality. Such is the magic act which takes place continuously in the development of a work of art. On this and only on this is creation based.
—Hans Hofmann, 1948
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Audio Transcript:
Creation is dominated by three, absolutely different factors. First: Nature, which works upon us by its laws. Second: the artist, who creates a spritiual contact with nature and its materials. Third, the medium of expression, through which the artist translates his inner world. Of those three components, only one—the medium—is material.
—Hans Hofmann, 1948
The Wind
1942
Oil, Duco, gouache, and India ink on board
43 ⅞ x 27 ¾ in. (111.4 x 70.5 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of the artist
1965.16
Fantasia (Phantasia)
1943
Oil duco, and casein on plywood
51 ½ x 36 ⅝ in. (130.8 x 93 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; gift of
the artist
1963.1
Effervescence
1944
Oil, India ink, casein, and enamel on panel
54 ⅜ x 35 in. (138.1 x 91.1 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Gift of the artist
1965.9
Idolatress No. 1
1959
Oil on panel
60 ⅛ x 40 ⅛ in. (152.7 x 101.9 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of
the artist
1963.8
Untitled
1959
Oil on canvas
36 ⅛ x 48 ⅛ in. (91.8 x 122.2 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Bequest of
the artist
1966.49
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