MASTER/REVOLUTIONARY: Hofmann in Provincetown
A Summer Exhibit Celebrates
a Renowned Teacher and Painter
“If
I had not been rescued by America, I would have lost my chance
as a painter.”
—Hans
Hofmann
Originally
published in ArtsAroundBoston,
Summer 2000
In July and August, Provincetown
brings to a close its celebration of 100 years as an art colony with
a major
exhibition of the work of Hans Hofmann, masterful teacher and revolutionary
painter. The exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum,
curated by Hofmann's friend and former student Lillian Orlowsky, will
include seldom seen works from the Hofmann estate. There will be a concurrent
exhibit of the works of artists who were Hofmann's Provincetown students
and a group of Hofmann’s Provincetown drawings at the Berta Walker
Gallery.
From his earliest days in Munich, to his schools in New York and Provincetown,
Hofmann was an enormously popular teacher. His pupils of note include
Louise Nevelson and Richard Stankiewicz, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler,
Larry Rivers, Vaclav Vytlacil, George McNeil, Robert Henry, Selina Trieff,
Paul Resika, Myron Stout, Peter Busa, Fritz Bultman, William Freed, Wolf
Kahn, Robert De Niro, Red Grooms, Lillian Orlowsky, Emily Farnham, Tony
Vevers, Robert Beauchamp, Haynes Ownby, Marisol, John Grillo, and Brenda
Horowitz.
By 1930, when Hans Hofmann arrived in America, he was already 50 years
old and internationally famous as an exceptional teacher. He had founded
the Hans Hofmann School for Modern Art in Munich in 1915 after a decade
in Paris, where he was acquainted with many of the leaders of the modern
art movements. There, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism and German Expressionism
fermented. It was there, at the epicenter of the seismic shifts taking
place in art, that he developed the theories that would travel with him
to America and powerfully influence the history of American painting.
The Munich school was so successful that at the end of the war, by1918,
students were traveling from all over Europe and from America to study
with Hofmann. One of those students became Chairman of the art department
at Berkeley and invited Hofmann to teach there during the summer of 1930
and again in 1931. Hofmann welcomed the opportunity to escape, even if
briefly, the oppressive atmosphere of the growing political turmoil in
Germany. In later years, he often expressed his deep, lifelong gratitude
to the University of California for offering this refuge, saying "If
I had not been rescued by America, I would have lost my chance as a painter."
In the fall of 1932 Hofmann was invited to join the faculty at the Art
Students League. He left his wife, Maria (Miz) Wolfegg, in Munich to
run the art school, and moved to New York. Students were eager to study
with him. According to
Cynthia Goodman, in her catalogue raisonné, "his modernism
was a welcome relief from the dreary Regionalism being offered by other
teachers at the league, such as Thomas Hart Benton." Goodman quotes
Vaclav Vytlacil, speaking of Hofmann's teaching, saying he had an impressive
ability to explain the complexities of post-Cezanne development so that "those
who were innocent could be made to understand."
Hofmann left the Art Students League in 1933, in the midst of the Depression,
to found his own school. Many of his students were artists working for
the WPA in New York. The school's statue grew as Hofmann began to show
his own work in 1944 and the GI Bill brought an influx of new students.
After two summers at the school of his former Munich student Ernest Thurn,
in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Hofmann opened his own summer school in
Provincetown in 1935, first located in the old Hawthorne house overlooking
the Bay. Many of Hofmann's New York students followed him to Provincetown,
and others came from across the country bringing a renewed youthful energy
to the colony.
With his forceful presence and personality, Hofmann became the central
figure of the Provincetown art community. It is said that students followed
him everywhere, listening to his every word. As one townie tells it, "his
students paved the way for him." There were even suggestions of
a "student cult." Haynes Ownby explains the attachment in saying, "he
truly loved his students. He saw in us comrades embarking on a great
mission." On Fridays, the studio overflowed with artists and others
from all over the Cape who came to observe his dynamic critiques. In
her 1980 ARTnews article, Gwen Kinkead quotes Robert Motherwell as saying, "Hofmann
was very much what young artists wanted in a father figure. He was vital,
optimistic, filled with the conviction that creation is the joy of life."
In 1939, his wife Miz joined him in the US and they moved seasonally
between New York and Provincetown. Still intensely private, Hofmann rarely
let anyone but Miz into his private studio at Days Lumberyard, now the
Fine Arts Work Center, where he is said to have painted in the nude.
He continued his strenuous year-round teaching schedule, although he
was concerned that the demands of teaching drained his own creative energy.
It was always a balancing act for him, between teaching and creativity,
and for many years, his legendary success as a teacher over-shadowed
his reputation as a painter. He was reluctant to exhibit. In fact, so
few had seen his work that some New York critics questioned whether he
could paint. He said that he feared his students might not develop independently
if they saw his work. Not until 1944, when he was 68, did he have his
first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery.
As soon as he began exhibiting, Hofmann's work attracted widespread interest,
although not consistent critical acclaim. He kept changing and evolving;
his stylistic diversity (Hofmann said, "If I ever find a style,
I'll stop painting.") put off many art critics, and it took a long
time to gain their support. As late as 1958, Hofmann was omitted from
the crucial "New American Painting" traveling show mounted
by MOMA. After 1958, when he was approaching 80, Hofmann broke through
to a style that won unqualified praise. In 1963, MOMA mounted a retrospective
exhibiting many important works for the first time.
After teaching more than forty years, Hofmann closed both his schools
in 1958, and devoted himself full time to his painting. The paintings
he created in the last years of his life are exuberant exaltations in
color and form. Those attending the exhibition will again be captivated
by the brilliance, vigor and sheer beauty of the work of this extraordinary
man who was the primary force in the development of Abstract Expressionism
and whose influence continues as a vital presence in the studios, galleries,
and museums of Provincetown and beyond.
© 2005 Rena Lindstrom All Rights Reserved
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