Hans Hofmann: Trending quotes

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Hans Hofmann: 134 quotes3 likes

“Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus — not imitation... From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life — all movement and rhythm — time and light, color and mood — in short, all reality in Form and Thought.”

As quoted in Hans Hofmann (2000) by James Yohe
1970s and later

“Space expands or contracts in the tensions and functions through which it exists. Space is not a static, inert thing. Space is alive; space is dynamic; space is imbued with movement expressed by forces and counterforces; space vibrates and resounds with color, light and form in the rhythm of life.”

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 66
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 128
1960s

“A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.”

Henry Brooks Adams, in The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Misattributed

“Since one cannot create 'depth' by carving a hole in the picture, and since one should not attempt to create the illusion of depth by tonal gradation, depth as a plastic reality must be two dimensions in a formal sense as well in the sense of color. 'Depth' is not created on a flat surface as an illusion, but as a plastic reality. The nature of the picture plane makes it possible to achieve depth without destroying the two-dimensional essence of the picture plane.. A plane is a fragment in the architecture of space. When a number of planes are opposed one to another, a spatial effect results. A plane functions in the same manner as the walls of a building... Planes organized within a picture create the pictorial space of its composition... The old masters were plane-consciousness. This makes their pictures restful as well as vital…”

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 44
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“The art of pictorial creation is so complicated — it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization.”

Quote of Hofmann in Hawthorne — the Painter: An Appreciation, (1952)
1950s

“A glimpse heavenward at a constellation or even at a single star only suggests infinity; actually our vision is limited. We cannot perceive unlimited space; it is immeasurable. The universe, as we know it through our visual experience, is limited. It first came into existence with the formation of matter, and will end with the complete dissolution of matter.”

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 43
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)