Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts 
September 21, 2019–January 6, 2020

Bringing together nearly seventy works spanning the entirety of the artist’s career, this exhibition presents a fresh and eye-opening examination of Hans Hofmann’s prolific and innovative artistic practice. Featuring paintings and works on paper from 1930 through the end of Hofmann’s life in 1966, the exhibition includes numerous masterworks from BAMPFA’s distinguished collection as well as many seldom-seen works from both public and private collections across North America and Europe. The Nature of Abstraction provides new insight into Hofmann’s continuously experimental approach to painting and the expressive potential of color, form, and space, reconnecting many of the artist’s most iconic late-career paintings with dozens of remarkably robust, prescient, and understudied works from the 1930s and 1940s.

Hofmann was a multi-generational synthesis of student, artist, and teacher/mentor, whose singular artistic development and achievement manifested as a unique amalgamation of artistic influences and innovations that bridged two world wars and pan-Atlantic avant-gardes. Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction offers new audiences the chance to discover this magnificent body of work for the first time, and a fresh opportunity for those already familiar with the artist to experience new revelations across the full arc of his career.

BAMPFA holds the world’s most extensive museum collection of Hofmann’s paintings. In 1963, the German-born, American artist donated to the University of California nearly fifty paintings and a significant cash contribution toward the completion of BAMPFA’s first museum building, which opened in 1970. The artist made this extraordinary gift in recognition of the University’s decisive role in his immigration to America from Germany, allowing him to escape World War II and “start in America as a teacher and artist.”

Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog from UC Press featuring new scholarly perspectives from the exhibition’s curator Lucinda Barnes, Ellen G. Landau, and Michael Schreyach.

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  Painting

  Indian Summer

  Hans Hofmann
  

  1959
  oil on canvas
  60 1/8 x 72 1/4 in.
  BAMPFA, gift of the artist. Photo: Jonathan Bloom © The Regents of the University of California
  
  
• 

  Painting

  Cataclysm (Homage to Howard Putzel)

  Hans Hofmann
  

  1945
  oil and casein on board
  51 3/4 x 48 in.
  private collection. Photo courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; with permission of the Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  
  
• 

  Painting

  Goliath

  Hans Hofmann
  

  1960
  oil on canvas
  84 1/8 x 60 in.
  BAMPFA, gift of Hans Hofmann. Photo: Ben Blackwell © The Regents of the University of California
  
  
• 

  Painting

  Morning Mist

  Hans Hofmann
  

  1958
  oil on canvas
  55 1/8 x 40 3/8 in.
  BAMPFA, bequest of the artist. Photo: Ben Blackwell © The Regents of the University of California
  
  
• 

  Painting

  Sparks

  Hans Hofmann
  

  1957
  oil on canvas
  60 x 48 in.
  The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, bequest of Caroline Wiess Law; with permission of the Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  
  
• 

  Painting

  Atelier (Still Life, Table with White Vase)

  Hans Hofmann
  

  1938
  oil on panel
  60 x 48 1/2 in.
  Collection of Mrs. James A. Fisher, Pittsburgh. Photo: Tom Little Photography; with permission of the Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  
  

  

  In this untitled 1942 work, Hans Hofmann combines the influence of Cézanne with Fauvism. Photo: Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society, Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society

  
  

  

  Hans Hofmann’s “Exaltment” is a 1947 work that shows him trying out surrealism. Photo: Addison Gallery of American Art / Phillips Academy / Art Resource, NY, Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society

  
  

  

  “The Wind” is a 1942 work by Hans Hofmann, made by dripping paint directly on the canvas. Photo: Ben Blackwell, University of California

  

  Hans Hofmann, “Auxerre” (1960) Photo: Christie, Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society

  
  

  

  Hans Hofmann, “The Vanquished” (1959) Photo: Jonathan Bloom, University of California

  

  Hans Hofmann, “In the Wake of the Hurricane” (1960) Photo: Jonathan Bloom, University of California