Hans Hofmann quotes

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. (Hans Hofmann)
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. View quote
Hans Hofmann
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. View quote
Hans Hofmann
Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind. View quote
Hans Hofmann
Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist. View quote
Hans Hofmann
When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon mastery of the medium. View quote
Hans Hofmann
It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws. View quote
Hans Hofmann
An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea. View quote
Hans Hofmann
Art is something absolute, something positive, which gives power just as food gives power. While creative science is a mental food, art is the satisfaction of the soul. View quote
Hans Hofmann
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. View quote
Hans Hofmann
To sense the invisible and to be able to create it, that is art. (Hans Hofmann)
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. View quote
Hans Hofmann
Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling. The artist is born, and art is the expression of his overflowing soul. Because his soul is rich, he cares comparatively little about the superficial necessities of the material world; he sublimates the pressure of material affairs in an artistic experience. View quote
Hans Hofmann
What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation. View quote
Hans Hofmann
The general misunderstanding of a work of art is often due to the fact that the key to its spiritual content and technical means is missed. Unless the observer is trained to a certain degree in the artistic idiom, he is apt to search for things which have little to do with the aesthetic content of a picture. He is likely to look for pure representational values when the emphasis is really upon music-like relationships. View quote
Hans Hofmann
The impulse of nature, fused through the personality of the artist by laws arising from the particular nature of the medium, produces the rhythm and the personal expression of a work. Then the life of the composition becomes a spiritual unity. View quote
Hans Hofmann
A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world. Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament. View quote
Hans Hofmann
Just as counterpoint and harmony follow their own laws, and differ in rhythm and movement, both formal tensions and color tensions have a development of their own in accordance with the inherent laws from which they are separately derived. Both, however, aim toward the realization of the same image. And both deal with the depth problem. View quote
Hans Hofmann
It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture. View quote
Hans Hofmann
The difference between the arts arises because of the difference in the nature of the mediums of expression and the emphasis induced by the nature of each medium. Each means of expression has its own order of being, its own units. View quote
Hans Hofmann
There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations. (Hans Hofmann)
The impressionistic method leads into a complete splitting and dissolution of all areas involved in the composition, and color is used to create an overall effect of light. The color is, through such a shading down from the highest light in the deepest shadows, sacrified an degraded to a (black-and-white) function. This leads to the destructions of the color as color. View quote
Hans Hofmann
The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space. View quote
Hans Hofmann
Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light. View quote
Hans Hofmann
It isn't necessary to make things large to make them monumental; a head by Giacometti one inch high would be able to vitalize this whole space. View quote
Hans Hofmann