27 Facts About Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher.

Hans Hofmann's career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstract Expressionism.

Hans Hofmann's works are in the permanent collections of major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, National Gallery of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago.

Hans Hofmann is regarded as one of the most influential art teachers of the 20th century.

Hans Hofmann established an art school in Munich in 1915 that built on the ideas and work of Cezanne, the Cubists and Kandinsky; some art historians suggest it was the first modern school of art anywhere.

Hans Hofmann died of a heart attack in New York City on February 17,1966.

From a young age, Hans Hofmann gravitated towards science and mathematics.

Hans Hofmann increased his knowledge of mathematics there, eventually developing and patenting devices including an electromagnetic comptometer, a radar device for ships at sea, a sensitized light bulb, and a portable freezer unit for military use.

In Paris, Hans Hofmann studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and Academie Colarossi.

Hans Hofmann immersed himself in Paris's avant-garde art scene, working with Matisse and becoming friends with Picasso, Georges Braque, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay.

Hans Hofmann worked and exhibited in Paris until the onset of World War I, producing paintings most influenced by the Cubists and Cezanne.

Hans Hofmann reopened his art school in 1934, conducting classes in New York and in Provincetown during summer.

Two years later, Hans Hofmann married Renate Schmitz, who remained with him until his death from a heart attack in New York City on February 17,1966, just prior to his 86th birthday.

Hans Hofmann began an extended period focused solely on drawing some time in the 1920s, returning to painting in 1935.

That same year, Hans Hofmann was featured in a solo exhibition at The Arts Club of Chicago, and two key group shows of Abstract and Surrealist art in America, curated by Sidney Janis and Parsons.

In 1947, Hans Hofmann began exhibiting annually at the Kootz Gallery in New York, and over the next decade continued to gain recognition.

In 1957, the Whitney Museum put up a large retrospective on Hans Hofmann, which traveled to seven additional museums in the United States over the next year.

Hans Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but as a teacher of art, both in his native Germany and later in the US His value as a teacher lay in the consistency and uncompromising rigor of his artistic standards and his ability to teach the fundamental principles of postwar abstraction to a diverse body of students.

Hans Hofmann founded his first school, Schule fur Bildende Kunst in Munich in 1915, building on the ideas and work of Cezanne, the Cubists, and Kandinsky.

Hans Hofmann's hands-on teaching methods included ongoing discussion of art theory, life drawing sessions, and regular critiques from Hofmann himself, a practice which was a rarity in the Academy.

Hans Hofmann ran the school, including summer sessions held throughout Germany, and in Austria, Croatia, Italy and France until he emigrated to the US in 1932.

Hans Hofmann taught again at Berkeley and at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles the next year before again returning to Germany.

In 1958, Hans Hofmann closed his schools in order to devote himself exclusively to his own creative work.

Hans Hofmann held a strong conviction about the spiritual and social value of art.

Hans Hofmann designed a public work, a colorful mural located outside the entrance of the High School of Graphic Communication Arts located in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.

In 2015, at a Christie's New York auction, Hans Hofmann's Auxerre, inspired by the expansive stained glass windows of the Cathedrale Saint Etienne in France, achieved a world auction record for the artist at $6,325,000.

When Hans Hofmann died on February 17,1966, his widow, Renate Hans Hofmann, managed his Estate.