Herbert Matter, Hans Hofmann painting in the dunes, 1942. ©Herbert Matter Estate. Photograph courtesy of Staley-Wise Gallery, New York City.
SALEM, MASS. – This fall, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents a fresh perspective on the artist and teacher widely considered to be one of the most influential American artists of the Twentieth Century. PEM is the exclusive East Coast venue for “Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction,” organized by the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). On view from September 21 through January 5, the exhibition presents one of the most comprehensive examinations of Hans Hofmann’s innovative and prolific career to date.
In 1963 Hofmann donated his most significant paintings to BAMPFA to form the world’s largest museum holdings of the artist’s work. Featuring more than 45 paintings – including works from private collections that have never been exhibited in a museum setting – “Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction” focuses on his continually experimental approach to painting and its expressive potential.
“This exhibition reveals the full force and voluminous output of Hofmann’s creativity. Powerfully influenced by Matisse’s use of color and cubism’s displacement of form, he was continually evolving his practice and searching for new forms of expression,” said Lydia Gordon, PEM’s associate curator for exhibitions and research and the exhibition’s coordinating curator. “Both as a teacher and a practitioner, Hofmann famously wrestled with the ‘push and pull’ of a painting, which he described as the interdependent relationships among form, color, texture and space that create the effect of movement.”
Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) played a pivotal role in the development of abstract expressionism and is celebrated for his exuberant canvases. Renowned as an influential teacher for generations of artists – first in his native Germany, then in New York and Provincetown – Hofmann left an indelible legacy on painting. As a teacher and as a modern artist, Hofmann associated with many of the most notable artists, critics and dealers of the Twentieth Century, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Wassily Kandinsky, Peggy Guggenheim, Clement Greenberg, Jackson Pollock and many others.
In the summer of 1935, Hofmann established an art school in Provincetown, a spot he would return to for the next 20 years. Countless students – including Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner and Ray Eames – were inspired by Hofmann’s bold, color-filled canvases and his exacting methods of instruction. He advocated the use of nature as a starting point and he prolifically painted scenes in and around Provincetown in varied stylistic approaches – cubist, fauvist, expressionist. Soon Hofmann’s colorful explorations of pictorial space evolved into artistic expressions of mood, states of mind, and the counterforces of nature.
The Peabody Essex Museum is at 161 Essex Street. For information, 866-745-1876 or www.pem.org.
