Top 15 Hans Hofmann Quotes

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

People say 'Hofmann has different styles'. I have not. I have different moods; I am not two days the same man.

Through a painting, we can see the whole world.

Eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

as quoted in Jackson Pollock, Ellen G Landau, p. 259, as quoted in Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Ines Janet Engelmann, Prestel Verlag Munich, 2007, p. 66

[visiting Jackson Pollock’s studio]: You do not work from nature. This is no good, you will repeat yourself. You work by heart, not from nature. [Pollock reacted: 'I am nature]

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.

Quote in: 'Hans Hofmann', (1986) by Cynthia Goodman, p. 103

Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind.

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.

Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist.

In nature, light creates the color; in the picture, color creates light. Every color shade emanates a very characteristic light — no substitute is possible.

My paintings are always images of my whole psychic makeup. You cannot deny yourself. You ask, am I painting myself? I'd been a swindler if I did otherwise. I'd be denying my existence as an artist. I've been also asked, what do you want to convey? And I say, nothing but my own nature.. .I am nothing but an optimist.

Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world. Of those three components only one, the medium, is material.

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.