1880
On 21 March, Johann Georg Albert Hofmann is born in Weissenburg, Bavaria, to Theodor Friedrich Hofmann (3 August 1855–19 August 1903) and Franziska Manger Hofmann (18 February 1849–10 May 1921).
Hans is the second child of Theodor and Franziska. His older brother Karl was born in 1878 in Weissenburg; three younger siblings—Rosa, Maria, and Theodor—were born in 1881, 1883, and 1884, in Forchheim, a large town north of Nuremberg.
1886
After several job-related relocations to other Bavarian cities, Theodor is hired as a Funktionär (an entry-level administrative position) in Munich, in the State Ministry of the Interior. The family moves to the Bavarian capital city on 4 June, and take up residence in an apartment on Zweibrückenstraße.
1898 — 1899
In November, Hofmann moves into his own apartment in Munich on Corneliusstraße; in August 1899, he moves to 47 Georgenstraße, located in the bohemian Schwabing district of Munich. He, too, takes a job as a Funktionär at the State Ministry of the Interior, following his father’s career path.
Between 1898 and 1899, Hofmann begins his part-time art education with lessons from German artist Moritz Heymann.
1900 — 1904
Sometime in 1900, he receives instruction at Heinrich Wolff and Ernst Neumann’s school for graphic arts, and returns to Heymann at some point during the same year. From approximately 1900 through 1902, Hofmann studies with Bulgarian artist Nikolai Michaeiloff.
Hofmann moves frequently at this time, registering over a dozen different addresses with the Munich city police—a requirement of all residents. His last address in Munich, registered in October of 1904, was on Kaulbachstraße, located one block from Munich’s Englischer Garten.
While he continues to work as an administrator, Hofmann is a part-time art student. From 1902 through 1904, he studies next with Slovene artist Anton Ažbe, whose previous students include Russian artists Alexei Jawlensky and Wassily Kandinsky. Willy Schwarz, another of Hofmann’s likely art teachers, was an instructor at Ažbe’s school of graphic arts; it is most plausible that Hofmann took lessons here with Schwarz. During the summer of 1902, Hofmann takes art lessons in Nagybánya, Hungary.
Sometime between 1900 and 1904, Hofmann meets his future wife, Maria “Miz” Wolfegg (1885–1963) in Munich. In the same period, the artist is introduced to Philipp Freudenberg, owner of Berlin’s high-end department store, the Kaufhaus Gerson. Known for its designer clothing, and its display of Wiener Werkstätte designs, Gerson’s carried the latest in Parisian fashion. Freudenberg and two of his sons, Hermann and Julius, were also avid art collectors.
Hofmann is introduced to Philipp Freudenberg through either a nephew of the department store owner, or through Willy Schwarz. Following their introduction, Freudenberg becomes Hofmann’s patron for the following decade, and provides the artist with the financial means to live in Paris with Miz.
From around 1901 until approximately 1906, Hofmann paints portraits of Miz and of himself that show his painterly experimentation with Pointillist techniques. In a letter written in 1962 to art historian and museum director Ludwig Grote, Hofmann retrospectively asserts, “I painted my first pictures to my heart’s content. I painted Miz—now Mrs. Hofmann—again and again. These first pictures brought me the attention of Paul Cassirer and the acquaintance of Philipp Freudenberg, whose patronage of many years secured my stay in Paris.”
1905
By 4 May, Hofmann is a full-time resident of Paris, and Miz joins him soon after. Their friends include many of the German artists, dealers, and intellectuals who gather at the Café du Dôme on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, including Jules Pascin, Rudolf Levy, Wilhelm Uhde, Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann, Walter Bondy, Hans Purrmann, as well as Robert and Sonia Delaunay.
Hofmann later remarks that he and other artists were “in constant touch with Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Delaunay, Derain, Gertrude Stein, and others.” Hofmann arrives in Paris amidst a feast of artistic experimentation. To Grote, he describes the city as “a baptism of fire in these years.”
1908
Hofmann’s painting Akt (Nude) is included in the 15th exhibition of the Berlin Secession, held from April through October.
1909
Hofmann’s painting Damenbildnis (Portrait of a Woman) is included in the 18th exhibition of the Berlin Secession, held from April through October.
1910
From 25 June until 10 July, the Paul Cassirer Galerie in Berlin holds Hofmann—Kokoschka, a joint exhibition featuring paintings by the 30-year-old Hofmann and the 24-year-old Austrian artist, Oskar Kokoschka. Of Hofmann’s 17 exhibited works, eight were still lifes, four were landscapes, and five were interiors. The exhibition was given very brief reviews in the German art journals Der Cicerone and Die Kunst. None of Hofmann’s works were sold, and their location remains unknown.
1911
In the summer, Hofmann registers for permission to paint in the Luxembourg Gardens, close to the apartment that he and Miz rent on Paris’s Left Bank at 74 Rue de Sèvres.
1913 — 1914
Miz and Hofmann leave Paris for a Studienreise (study trip) to Corsica in the summer of 1913, expecting to return to Paris. In a letter to Hofmann of 5 March, Philipp Freudenberg writes, “I find your dream of going to Corsica excellent. […] I wish you a happy journey. After some time, please write from Corsica [and tell me] how you are doing.”
1914
In the early summer, the Hofmanns are in Herrsching, a small lake-side town popular with summer tourists, located 25 miles southwest of Munich. They are unable to return to Paris after Germany declares war on Russia on 1 August, and they move back to Munich. All of their possessions—including Hofmann’s paintings—remain in their Paris apartment, which they had rented to artist Rudolf Levy.
Attempting to locate the possessions that he and Miz left in Paris, Hofmann writes letters of inquiry to his former landlord, but none of their belongings are recovered. Hofmann would continue to pursue compensation for the next decade.
1915
Hofmann opens the eponymous Schule für Bildende Kunst (School of Fine Art) at 40 Georgenstraße. In the summer, he applies for and receives Ausgemustert (discharge) papers from the German army, and avoids military service during World War I.
1919
In Murnau, a Bavarian town located in southern Germany, Hofmann holds a summer session for the School of Fine Art. He will continue to hold summer sessions outside of Munich for the next decade. The first three sessions are in Germany: 1920 in Herrsching; 1921 in Seefeld; and 1922 in Hechendorf. The next seven years of summer sessions are in international locations: 1923 in Gmund, Austria; 1924 in Ragusa (now Dubrovnik); 1925, 1926, and 1927 in Capri, Italy; and 1928 and 1929 in St. Tropez, France.
1922
On 28 November, in compensation for the loss of his property in Paris eight years prior, Hofmann is awarded a loan of 180,000 Marks from Germany’s Imperial Indemnification Office for War Damage.
The German Expressionist artist Gabrielle Münter, who had been in a long-term relationship with painter Wassily Kandinsky from the early 1900s through mid-World War I, spends Christmas with the Hofmanns in Munich.
1923
American art students Vaclav Vytlacil, Ernest Thurn, and Ludwig Sander leave Munich’s conservative Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) to attend Hofmann’s school, which includes life drawing sessions and regular critiques from Hofmann himself, the latter practice a rarity in the Academy.
Such hands-on teaching, along with regular discussion of art theory, attracts an international array of students seeking more avant-garde instruction. Some stay for years, while others attend for only a few weeks. By the mid-1920s, Hofmann cements his reputation as a forward-thinking teacher of modern art.
1924
On 5 June, Hofmann and Miz marry in Munich. During the year, Münter asks the Hofmanns to store 23 works by Kandinsky.
1927
Hofmann paints Green Bottle, one of three extant oil paintings from the 1920s. The other two works are a self portrait from c. 1926 and an untitled painting from 1929. Green Bottle reflects many of Hofmann’s early artistic influences, from the still-life paintings of Cézanne and Van Gogh, to the Cubist works by Picasso, Braque, and Juan Gris.
1930
At the invitation of his former student Worth Ryder, by then a member of the art department faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, Hofmann travels to the United States and teaches art at the University. The summer art session runs from 19 May through 28 June, and he returns to Munich afterward, resuming classes from the fall of 1930 through the spring of 1931.
1931
Hofmann accepts a second invitation to teach at the University of California’s summer art session. In July and then in August, the Berkeley art department and San Francisco’s California Palace of the Legion of Honor give Hofmann his first exhibitions in the United States. The two shows consist of drawings completed by Hofmann while teaching in Europe and California, and include portraits and interior figure studies, and landscapes from places such as St. Tropez. In the autumn, Hofmann returns to Munich to teach and he remains there through late spring of 1932.
1932
On his third trip to the United States, Hofmann returns to California to teach in Los Angeles at the Chouinard School of Art from 1 June through 31 August. In Hofmann’s absence, artist Edmund Daniel Kinzinger teaches summer session classes in St. Tropez, and does the same in Murnau in the summer of 1933.
In September, Hofmann moves from Los Angeles to New York, and one month later he teaches a six-week evening drawing class at the Art Students League, a progressive, independent art school in New York. One of his many students is Ray Kaiser (later, Ray Eames), who would continue to study painting at the Hofmann school in New York and in Provincetown until 1940.
In the winter, Hofmann leaves the Art Students League to teach private art classes in a building at 444 Madison Avenue. He decides to remain in the United States to pursue these and other teaching opportunities, and postpones his return trip to Germany for the foreseeable future.
1933
Hofmann spends the summer in Gloucester, Massachusetts, invited by former student Ernest Thurn to teach at the Thurn School of Art. Hofmann’s Schule für Bildende Kunst officially closes in Munich.
He applies for an extension of his visa in December. Worth Ryder writes a character letter on Hofmann’s behalf and University of California President Robert Sproul writes an endorsement letter to the State Department, supporting Hofmann’s visa extension.
1934
In late January, Hofmann leaves the United States while his visa application is being renewed. He spends the following several weeks in Bermuda, and returns to New York aboard the Queen of Bermuda steamship on 19 February.
Over the summer, Hofmann lectures again at the Thurn School of Art. He shares a house nicknamed the “Little Studio” in Gloucester with Mercedes Carles (later, Mercedes Matter) and her father Arthur B. Carles, who both encourage Hofmann’s return to painting. He begins work on what would be an extensive series of landscapes.
Returning to New York in the fall, Hofmann teaches painting and drawing classes full time at the newly founded Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, located at 137 East 57th Street. He holds morning and afternoon classes in painting, drawing from life, and composition. Life drawing classes are held each weekday evening, and Hofmann holds additional classes on Saturdays.
In the late fall, Hofmann gives a series of lectures at his school on his theories of art, which are advertised in the New York Times: “Historical—Aesthetic Constants” (9 November), “Elements of Plastic Creation” (23 November), and “Social Significance of Modern Art” (7 December).
At the end of the year, Hofmann decides that he will run his own summer art school as he had done in Germany. He learns of a vacancy at the former studio of artist and teacher Charles Webster Hawthorne, founder of the Cape Cod School of Art in 1899 in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
1935
Hofmann takes up residency in Hawthorne’s Miller Hill studio—often referred to as the “Hawthorne Barn”—and starts holding summer classes as part of the Hofmann School of Fine Arts. He paints a number of landscapes here, titled “Miller Hill.”
1936
In October, Hofmann moves the School of Fine Arts from 137 East 57th Street to 52 West 9th Street.
1937
Lee Krasner, who would become one of the foremost Abstract Expressionist painters as well as the wife of Jackson Pollock, enrolls in Hofmann’s art school. She attends painting classes on and off at Hofmann’s school during the next three years.
1938
In March, Hofmann files an application for US citizenship. While he had already established a position for himself in the New York art scene, Hofmann is likely prompted by news of mounting turmoil in Europe and Hitler’s far-reaching National Socialist regime.
In an August letter to her husband, Miz warns him to “put order into your relationship to the U.S.A. soon. Here they are drafting even the veteran reserve up to 65 years […], and it is possible that also Germans living abroad could be drafted […].”
In July, the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts moves to 52 West 8th Street. During the 1938–1939 school year, Krasner introduces Hofmann to art critic Clement Greenberg. The critic attends three lectures by Hofmann at the school, and would champion the artist’s work in numerous publications during the next two decades.
Hofmann lives at 177 West 4th Street.
1939
After six years of living in Munich apart from her husband, Miz departs for the United States. She travels first to Paris, then departs Europe from Le Havre, bound for New York via the ocean liner President Harding, and arrives on 26 August.
Miz spends the winter of 1939 and 1940 in New Orleans with former Hofmann student Fritz Bultman and his prominent New Orleans family. The Bultmans had helped Miz procure her visa for immigration to the United States, and their connection to the Isaac Delgado Museum in New Orleans likely inspires the Museum to exhibit Hofmann’s works in 1941.
1940
Hofmann paints Spring, a small, abstract “drip” painting of oil on panel. This and several other works from the early 1940s such as Untitled, The Wind, Fantasia, and Agitation indicate Hofmann’s early stylistic experimentation with a technique that Pollock would make famous by the end of the decade.
1941
On 16 February, Hofmann gives an address on the relationship between color and form to the American Abstract Artists group at their annual symposium, held at the Riverside Museum in New York.
In March, the first exhibition to include Hofmann’s paintings opens in New Orleans at the Isaac Delgado Museum.
On 21 August, Hofmann receives his US citizenship papers.
1942
Krasner introduces Hofmann to Jackson Pollock. Krasner describes their encounter in Pollock’s studio: when Hofmann looks around at the younger artist’s works, he notes that there are no still lifes or models, and asks, “Do you work from nature?” Pollock responds, “I am nature.”
In June, Hofmann writes about the impact of military hostilities in Cape Cod, saying: “The blackout problem is a real problem when one deals with a house which is mostly windows. The war is much nearer here than it is in New York. The other night a convoy was [attacked] only twenty minutes from [H]ighland Light, and in the morning they brought the [survivors], and the wounded men. No one was allowed to be on the piers, and still one big tanker is in the harbour for safety. How [silly] all this seems when one sees [nature's] beauty and abundance. The Lord must not be pleased with humanity––it was surely his most stupid creation.”
1943
To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Art Students League holds a large group exhibition, 7–28 February, and includes an oil painting by Hofmann.
In the spring, just a few months after opening her Art of This Century gallery in New York at 30 West 57th Street, American art collector Peggy Guggenheim views Hofmann’s paintings in his studio on 44 East 8th Street. Soon after her visit, which had been orchestrated by Krasner, Guggenheim begins organizing what would be Hofmann’s first solo exhibition in New York the following year.
In July, gasoline rationing due to World War II restricts Hofmann’s ability to paint landscapes other than those near his home. Without the use of his car to travel, he aggravates his hernia from lugging heavy supplies, and describes the gas restrictions as a “terrible handicap” to his work.
1944
Hofmann is included in four group shows, and his work is featured in two solo shows, making 1944 a pivotal year for the artist. Art historian (and later, art dealer) Sidney Janis selects Hofmann’s painting Wicker Chair No. II for inclusion in the “Abstract” section of the group exhibition, Abstract and Surrealist Art in the United States, held from 8 February through 24 September.
At Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim holds First Exhibition: Hans Hofmann, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York from 7 March through 8 April. The show is reviewed well in the New York Times, ARTnews and Arts Digest. The cover of the March issue of Arts & Architecture—designed by former Hofmann student Ray Eames—features a Hofmann drawing.
On 3 November, the solo exhibition, Hans Hofmann, opens at The Arts Club of Chicago.
In New York, on 29 November, Mortimer Brandt Gallery holds Abstract and Surrealist Art in America: Fifty Paintings by Outstanding Artists. Betty Parsons, longtime employee of Mortimer Brandt, organizes this smaller version of the Janis show and includes Hofmann’s painting Idolatress No. I.
1945
A solo exhibition for Hofmann opens on 2 April at Howard Putzel’s 67 Gallery in New York. Greenberg reviews the show, writing, “Hofmann has become a force to be reckoned with in the practice as well as in the interpretation of modern art.”
Hofmann is included in another exhibition at 67 Gallery later in the spring, a group show titled A Problem for Critics.
The lease for the Hawthorne barn is terminated. Fritz Bultman offers his studio to Hofmann and his students for the summer session of the Provincetown school. Hofmann moves his personal studio to the Days Lumberyard.
On 7 August, Putzel dies in the days between the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Disturbed by the advent of nuclear warfare and shaken by the death of his dealer and friend, Hofmann paints Cataclysm (Homage to Howard Putzel) and dedicates it to Putzel.
In the fall, the artist purchases a house at 76 Commercial Street, which was previously owned by seascape painter Frederick Waugh. The home will become the permanent Provincetown residence for Hofmann and Miz, and the school will run out of the large studio Waugh had built in the back. In New York, Hofmann moves his studio to 53 East 9th Street.
From 27 November through 10 January of the following year, Hofmann’s painting Idolatress is exhibited in the Whitney Annual for the first time, and he is included in 13 additional annuals before his death. Reviews of the exhibition and Hofmann’s work are positive, and in reference to the trends of the paintings included, Hilda Loveman uses the term “abstract expressionist” for the first time.
1946
From 18 through 30 March, Mortimer Brandt Gallery holds a solo exhibition for Hofmann. Robert Coates, skeptical of the “spatter-and-daub” style of painting, uses the term “abstract expressionism” in his review of Hofmann’s work.
Later in the year, Betty Parsons strikes an agreement with Mortimer Brandt to run his contemporary department under the name Betty Parsons Gallery. She now handles the sale of Hofmann’s work.
1947
Parsons organizes a solo exhibition to open on 26 January at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, as well as a show of Hofmann’s most recent work at her own gallery in the spring. She also brokers the sale of Black Demon with the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, which is the first museum to acquire the artist’s work.
By the fall, Hofmann leaves Parsons abruptly to join Kootz Gallery’s roster of artists. Hofmann feels bad about this, but defends his action in a letter to her by explaining his motivation and writes that it is “not business or hunger for fame. My work must be stronger promoted to avoid its later destruction.” Parsons, upset by Hofmann’s departure, refers to Sam Kootz as “a crocodile.”
Kootz Gallery opens its first show of Hofmann’s work on 23 November, and will organize a solo exhibition every subsequent year through 1966, except for 1948 and 1956.
1948
The Addison Gallery of American Art holds a large retrospective exhibition from 2 January through 23 February. In conjunction with the show, a collection of the artist’s essays is published as Search for the Real, and Other Essays.
Hofmann’s writings and theories on art are often cited and republished from this text, particularly the phrase “push and pull.” It is unclear when exactly Hofmann began using this term. His teachings and earlier writings are devoted to the concept behind it, but the first mention of “push and pull” in the Hofmann literature is in Search for the Real, and Other Essays.
This theory stems from the idea that pictorial space cannot rely solely on a single-point perspective based upon lines and points. “Push and pull” is the play between color, shape, and placement on a surface to create competing forces that produce depth within a flat surface.
Years later, when discussing his theories of art, Hofmann says, “I invented what I call ‘push and pull,’ ‘force and counterforce.’ I have been very modest about it, but they are really great discoveries.” The execution of this idea can be seen not only in his aptly titled series Push and Pull but in many earlier examples as well, including Gestation, Submerged, and Black Splash.
1949
Kootz helps to arrange Hofmann’s first European solo exhibition at Galerie Maeght in Paris. Hofmann travels with Miz to France for the opening on 7 January, which is his first time returning to Europe since immigrating to the United States. The French are not known for their affection towards American art at this time, but the reception of Hofmann’s work is generally positive. While in Paris, Hofmann meets with other artists, including Picasso.
During the summer in Provincetown, Hofmann helps Fritz Bultman and Weldon Kees curate an exhibition and organize lectures comprising Forum 49 at Gallery 200. Hofmann is one of the speakers to address the topic “What is an Artist?” and packs crowds at the gallery.
His work is included in the corresponding exhibition. Hofmann gives the newly completed painting Of Unequal but Equivalent Balance to the Musée de Grenoble in France. This is the first museum in Europe to acquire a work by Hofmann.
1950
In April, Hofmann participates in a three-day symposium at Studio 35 in Greenwich Village, which is an unscripted discussion among 25 artists, including William Baziotes, James Brooks, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, and David Smith. The moderators are Alfred H. Barr Jr., Richard Lippold, and Motherwell.
As a result of the discussions at Studio 35, Gottlieb suggests writing a letter to the president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in protest against the upcoming exhibition American Painting Today. Signed by 18 artists, including Hofmann, the letter is published on the front page of the New York Times on 22 May. The letter charges that the selection jury for the exhibition is “notoriously hostile” towards modern art.
The following day, the New York Herald Tribune publishes an editorial referring to the group as “The Irascible Eighteen.” Nina Leen photographs 14 of the protesting artists in an iconic portrait of the group for an article appearing in the January 1951 issue of Life. Hofmann misses the photo session in New York because he is in Provincetown.
During the summer, student Sam Feinstein begins filming Hofmann for a documentary on the artist. Hofmann is filmed painting The Window, and offers narration about his philosophies guiding the creation of his art.
Sam Kootz organizes an exhibition at his gallery titled The Muralist and the Modern Architect to open on 3 October. Kootz pairs artists with architects, teaming Hofmann with José Luis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener. Hofmann is tasked to create murals for a proposed civic center and bell tower in the Peruvian city of Chimbote. The project was never actualized, but the studies are magnificent in their own right. They encapsulate many of Hofmann’s ongoing concerns with abstraction as a spiritual pursuit.
1951
The Art Institute of Chicago selects Hofmann as one of the jurors for its 60th Annual American Exhibition. The jury, composed of Hofmann, Peter Blume, and Aline B. Louchheim, awards the top prize to de Kooning.
Sidney Janis Gallery in New York and Galerie de France in Paris jointly organize an exhibition titled American Vanguard Art for Paris. The New York show, which runs from 26 December through 5 January of the following year, is a small preview of the Paris show to follow.
Artists included with Hofmann are Josef Albers, Baziotes, Brooks, de Kooning, Robert Goodnough, Arshile Gorky, Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Roberto Matta, Loren MacIver, Motherwell, Pollock, Morgan Russell, Reinhardt, Mark Tobey, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Jack Tworkov, and Esteban Vicente.
The American reviews of the exhibition are not overly positive, and cast predictions that the French will not receive it well either because of the unbalanced nature of the show. Indeed, one French critic pens a review for Art d’Aujourd’hui claiming that he has rarely experienced a bigger disappointment than this exhibition.
1953
The popular American magazine Look publishes an article in its 28 July issue on Hofmann and Miz. The many photographs of the couple’s home in Provincetown offer a glimpse into the colorful world in which they live. The title of the article, “Living in a Painting,” is apt—the vibrancy of his home is reflected in the artist’s paintings. Hofmann is quoted saying, “I want always to live in color.”
Hofmann meets William H. Lane over the summer in Provincetown. Lane, successful in the plastics field, is interested in acquiring American art, and purchases five of Hofmann’s paintings. Towards the end of the year, Lane helps Miz with an inventory of Hofmann’s paintings in a storage facility in New York. Lane’s motivation to help with the inventory is unclear, but he works on-and-off over the next four years before abandoning the project completely.
1954
In conjunction with the retrospective exhibition Paintings by Hans Hofmann at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Hofmann donates the painting Germania—Version No. 7 to the museum.
1955
In May, Clement Greenberg curates a small Hofmann retrospective at Bennington College in Vermont. Kootz publishes Hofmann’s essay “The Color Problem in Pure Painting—Its Creative Origin” in the catalogue accompanying his November solo exhibition.
In his writing, Hofmann expands upon his thoughts that the relationships between colors are essential to the plasticity of a painting. This essay is then re-published inArts & Architecture in February of the next year, and is often referenced as one of Hofmann’s quintessential writings.
1956
Allan Kaprow, a former student of Hofmann, curates the exhibition Hans Hofmann at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, during the spring. Hofmann is commissioned to create a mosaic for the lobby and elevator bank for 711 Third Avenue in New York. The office building was designed by William E. Lescaze; one of the architect’s goals was to “add the strength and the warmth of the arts to a building that was designed to provide the ultimate in comfort and facilities.” Hofmann integrates the mosaics throughout the structure of the lobby, completely immersing the visitor in the colorful geometries of his pictorial environment.
Winter term 1955–1956 (October through January) is the last session in New York at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts.
1957
The Whitney Museum of American Art opens the large retrospective Hans Hofmann on 24 April; it then travels throughout the United States over the next year to seven additional museums. The show runs concurrently in New York with Picasso: 75th Anniversary Exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, which Hofmann calls “a happy accident … [because] we are old friends.”
Spanning the career and many styles of the artist, 55 paintings are included in the show. In his review of the exhibition, critic Harold Rosenberg asserts, “No American artist could mount a show of greater coherent variety than Hans Hofmann.”
To show his appreciation for organizing the exhibition, Hofmann gives the museum his painting Fantasia in Blue.
Hofmann teaches the final official summer session at his school in Provincetown.
1958
No longer teaching classes in New York, Hofmann devotes himself to painting full-time and moves his studio into his former school. He and Miz move to an apartment in One Washington Square Village.
Although the school in Provincetown is formally closed, Hofmann allows more than three dozen students to join him for critiques over the summer.
Hofmann completes a mosaic on the exterior of the New York School of Printing, located at 439 West 49th Street. The building was designed by Hugh Kelly and B. Sumner Gruzen, and the mural stretches 64 feet long by 11½ feet high. Hofmann refers to his mosaic as the “bowtie on the building.”
In September, the Hans and Maria Hofmann Foundation is formed in order to support the art community. The foundation mostly provides funding for museums to purchase works of Hofmann’s former students.
Spanning the months of August through January of the following year, Joseph H. Hirshhorn, a wealthy entrepreneur, purchases seven of Hofmann’s paintings, which will later become part of the collection at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.
1959
Hofmann moves his Provincetown studio from the Days Lumberyard into the former school behind his home on Commercial Street.
Three of Hofmann’s paintings are included in the Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany, and are reviewed warmly.
1960
Baltimore Museum of Art director Adelyn D. Breeskin, acting as curator for the American Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, selects Hofmann along with Guston, Kline, and Theodore Roszak to represent the United States. Thirteen of Hofmann’s paintings are featured in the pavilion.
An overall preoccupation with comparing American art to European art prevails in the reviews. One critic refers to Hofmann’s inclusion as an obvious choice, as he is “the acknowledged dean of Abstract Expressionism,” referencing the artist’s stature within the New York art movement, his age as the oldest of this group, as well as his reputation as a teacher.
Hofmann’s former student Worth Ryder dies. Hofmann donates the painting Summer Bliss to the University of California, Berkeley, in memory of his friend. This is the first of what will be many gifts to the University.
1961
Greenberg publishes a monograph on the artist, titled simply Hofmann. Greenberg writes that although Hofmann is difficult to categorize and sometimes to grasp or appreciate, he is a superb artist; he finds that Hofmann’s excellence is in direct relation to his absorption of Cubism, citing that Hofmann “sweat Cubism out” during the time in which the artist primarily drew and rarely painted prior to 1934. The author observes, “No one has digested Cubism more thoroughly than Hofmann, and perhaps no one has better conveyed its gist to others.”
1962
The Fränkische Galerie am Marientor in Nuremberg holds a retrospective for Hofmann, which then travels throughout Germany. This is the first solo exhibition for Hofmann in his native country, and he attends the opening on 8 April.
Shortly after the exhibition in Nuremberg, the city’s Akademie der Bildenden Künste grants the artist an honorary membership. In November, Dartmouth College awards Hofmann an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. Hofmann is included in the large group exhibition ART: USA: NOW: The S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. Collection of Contemporary American Paintings. This show travels to 43 venues over the course of the next five years throughout the United States, Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Canada.
Saddened by the death of friend and colleague Franz Kline, Hofmann is inspired to paint Memoria in Aeternum; with his inscription on the verso, he dedicates the painting to several artists important to him who have recently passed away: Kline, Gorky, Pollock, and Tomlin. It is given to The Museum of Modern Art the following year.
1963
Hofmann is the recipient of the Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Art Institute Medal and Prize at the Art Institute of Chicago, awarded to him for the painting The Golden Wall, which was included in the 66th Annual American Exhibition.
Miz undergoes surgery to correct a recurrent problem with gallstones. She dies of a heart attack the following day on 19 April. Hofmann has a very difficult time making sense of the loss of his partner of nearly 60 years.
He continues to paint quite profusely through the year, completing approximately 60 paintings. He writes to a friend, “This is not easy and would be impossible without my work because I am now completely alone [...] Fortunately however my work absorbs me completely and devours all my time so I am not to [sic] bad off. But I miss Miz terrible [sic].”
Long interested in partnering with a museum to act as guardian of many of his best works, Hofmann formalizes an agreement with the University of California at Berkeley. Given his extensive history with the institution and many of its faculty members, the arrangement seems logical. The agreement is negotiated by the legendary Judge Samuel Rosenman of Roosevelt New Deal fame on behalf of Hofmann and by Clark Kerr on behalf of the University.
Hofmann will donate 45 paintings and $250,000 to help fund the building of the museum with a wing named for himself and his recently deceased wife. The first ten paintings are given this year; 27 more are given before the artist dies—one is the double-sided painting Japanese Girl, which is subsequently split into two works—and the final eight are selected after his death.
The large retrospective that Hofmann and Miz had finalized just prior to her death opens at The Museum of Modern Art on 11 September. The exhibition of 56 artworks travels in modified format for more than two years to 12 venues located throughout the United States, South America, and Europe.
1964
Hofmann’s friends and neighbors, Robert and Helga Hoenigsberg, worry about the artist being by himself and frequently invite him over for dinner. During one of their evenings together, the couple, who also emigrated from Germany, introduce him to another German: a young woman named Renate Schmitz.
The two begin spending a great deal of time together, but given their 50-year age difference, Hofmann prefers to travel with her under the guise of an uncle/niece relationship. In response to his request to bring Renate with him to the Festival of the Arts at the White House in June, Hofmann is told, “it will not be possible […] to include your niece, Rene [sic] Schmitz on the guest list.”
Hofmann is honored with multiple awards: in January, he acts as a Juror for the Guggenheim International Award; in February, he is elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters; and in April, at the suggestion of Glenn Wessels, he is given an honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts at the University of California, Berkeley.
1965
In the fall, Hofmann marries Renate. In October, he receives the honorary degree of Doctor of Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
At the age of 85, he still is very active in his studio and completes approximately 45 paintings. Ten paintings are inscribed and designated by Hofmann as the Renate Series. The origin of this series is uncertain; some accounts suggest that Hofmann is inspired by his love for Renate to paint these works. She is, however, known to have a controlling influence over her husband, so it is just as likely that she asks Hofmann to create a series in her name and selects the works herself for inscription.
1966
Hofmann’s annual solo exhibition at Kootz opens on 1 February. Just shy of his 86th birthday, the artist dies of a heart attack on 17 February. There is no record of any work completed in this year.