HANS HOFMANN. NEW ACQUISITIONS IN 2020

Hans Hofmann (1880 – 1966) was one of the most innovative painters at the interface between figuration and abstraction. He was also one of the most important mediators of Fauvism and Expressionism in the USA. The work of the artist born in Weissenburg, Franconia, encompassed a noteworthy geographical and cultural scope: he was in dialogue with avant-garde painters in Paris between 1903 and 1914, in particular Robert and Sonia Delaunay. He was forced to return to Germany by the events of WWI, where from 1915 to 1934 he ran an increasingly successful fine art school in Munich, until he transferred his artistic and pedagogical practice to the USA from 1930. In his role as mediator between the continents, he familiarised a whole generation of artists including Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler with the achievements of Modernism from Wassily Kandinsky to Henri Matisse. Hofmann investigated the immediate effects of colour and form in painting through his definition of the “push and pull of colour”, and made an invaluable contribution to the development of American Abstract Expressionism through his experiments, observations, and definitions.

Thanks to the generous support of the Michael & Eleonore Stoffel Stiftung and to the fruitful cooperation with the Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust in New York, it was recently possible to obtain five works by Hofmann, painted between 1944 and 1966. This selection highlights Hofmann’s systematic yet refreshing ability to channel the opposing forces of method and chance, historical achievements and experimental exploration of the unknown.

The juxtaposition of these five newly acquired works by Hans Hofmann with a landscape painting by the French Expressionist Henri Manguin (1874 -1949) and a sculptural wall piece by the American John Chamberlain (1927 - 2011) displays the bridge that Hofmann built with his art and work, connecting Modernism to the next generation.

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