List of Hans Hofmann Quotes

Art Cannot Result From Sophisticated, Frivolous, Or Superficial Effects.

A Thought Functions Only As A Fragmentary Part In The Formulation Of An Idea.

Genius Is Gifted With A Vitality Which Is Expended In The Enrichment Of Life Through The Discovery Of New Worlds Of Feeling.

Depth, In A Pictorial, Plastic Sense, Is Not Created By The Arrangement Of Objects One After Another Toward A Vanishing Point, In The Sense Of The Renaissance Perspective, But On The Contrary (and In Absolute Denial Of This Doctrine) By The Creation Of Forces In The Sense Of Push And Pull . Nor Is Depth Created By Tonal Gradation (another Doctrine Of The Academician Which, At Its Culmination, Degraded The Use Of Color To A Mere Function Of Expressing Dark And Light).

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.

To Worship The Product And Ignore Its Development Leads To Dilettantism And Reaction.

As A Teacher I Approach My Students Purely With The Human Desire To Free Them From All Scholarly Inhibitions, And I Tell Them, "painters Must Speak Through Paint Not Through Words."

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.

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.

You Must Break All The Rules Of Painting, But You Must Also Convince Me You've Had A Reason To Do So.

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.

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.