HANS HOFMANN
HANS HOFMANN
The Summer Studio
7 July - 12 August 2016
Selected Works
Press Release
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – AMERINGER | McENERY | YOHE is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Hans Hofmann. The exhibition will open on 7 July and will remain on view through 12 August 2016. A public reception for the artist will be held on 7 July from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.
HANS HOFMANN was born in Weissenburg in Bavaria, Germany in 1880. He studied art in Munich and Paris, where he lived from 1904-14. He returned to Germany in 1914, and in 1915 he opened an art school in Munich. In 1930, Hofmann traveled to the United States, and from 1930-32 he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles. Because of the growing hostility toward intellectuals in Germany, Hofmann decided to remain in America.
In 1932, Hofmann moved to New York. He taught at the Art Students League, then opened the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in 1934. Beginning in 1935, he held summer classes as part of the Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, Cape Cod.
Hans Hofmann’s Provincetown years are widely recognized as an influential and pivotal moment in art history. As with all of the artist’s Provincetown landscapes, the work was painted on wood panel and often in plein air. Hofmann became a living bridge between the art of Europe’s vanguard and the young American artists through his own paintings and the classes he taught.
The magnificent, luminous, yet peaceful and serene atmosphere of Cape Cod influenced the significant body of work that is now seen as a composite of the colors of Fauvism and the structure of Cubism, movements in art he helped pioneer in Paris and Germany.
These Pre-War works celebrated the pure joy of painting and reflected the artist’s youthful and abundant enthusiasm that is the foundation and a signature characteristic of Hofmann’s paintings throughout his life. While masterpieces in their own right, these works were an indication of what would develop from the artist.
During his lifetime, Hofmann’s work was the subject of exhibitions at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, his first exhibition in the United States (1931); the Art of This Century Gallery (1944); the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1948); Whitney Museum of American Art (1957); the XXX Venice Biennale (1960); and The Museum of Modern Art (1963).
Hofmann’s work is in many permanent collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Musée de Grenoble; Grenoble, France; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv; and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.
Hofmann died in 1966 in New York at the age of 85.