In Balance

Description

Both an educator and artist, Hans Hofmann was always an innovator. He established an important school in Munich in 1915 and, after teaching at universities in Berkeley and Los Angeles, Hofmann relocated to New York and opened a school there in 1933. He is perhaps best known for employing the phrase "push and pull" to signify the simultaneous operation of flatness and depth in paintings. His recognizable imagery of landscapes and still lifes of the 1930s gave way in the 40s to abstractions based on the rhythm of nature. It was in 1940 that he became the first artist known to drip paint on his canvases, a technique exploited in 1947 by Jackson Pollock. Hoffmann closed his school in 1958 to devote himself entirely to art making but not before influencing several generations of artists, including such major figures as Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Lee Krasner, and Lester Johnson.
Hofmann felt that his abstracted compositions expressed the spiritual dimensions of nature and the landscapes he often used as a point of departure.
Sean M. Ulmer, University Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, on the occasion of the exhibition The New York School: Abstract Expressionism and Beyond, July 20, 2002 – January 19, 2003