Hans Hofmann

by Sam Hunter, Frank Stella (Contributor), Tina Dickey (Contributor)

As a teacher, Hans Hofmann left his mark on generations of artists in both Europe and America. He had an equally brilliant career as a painter. Hofmann operated a famous teaching studio first in Europe and then in New York at a pivotal moment when a new kind of subjective, non-figurative art was emerging as the dominant movement. His work is insistent upon color, texture, and form, and his astoundingly liberated later canvases are more than expressions of a creative process; they are, in the words of art historian Robert Goldwater, "...less the culmination of a life-long development than a kind of rebirth, an entirely new, youthful phase."

Genres: Art

282 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2002

About the author

Sam Hunter (January 5, 1923 – July 27, 2014) was an American historian of modern art. He was an author, an Emeritus professor of art history at Princeton University, director of the Jewish Museum, founding director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, acting director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and a visiting professor at the Clark Art Institute at Williams College, Harvard University and various other institutions of higher learning.

He penned monographs, exhibition catalogues, articles, wrote the original book on the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, contributed to textbooks and various treatments of modern art. In addition to curating many museum and gallery exhibitions, Hunter has written on Francis Bacon, Tom Wesselman, George Segal, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Jackson Pollock, and many other contemporary and modern masters.