Hans Hofmann Quotes

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The universe itself is limited in its complexity. Only the absolute nothing is unlimited, unthinkable, unseizable, shapeless, forceless, non-existent.

Hans Hofmann
The structure of a picture depends on the limitations of the picture plane. The first line of the composition establishes the creative format. The physical limitations of a picture become the start and the finish of the spirit's communication.

Hans Hofmann
An inner sensation can find external expression only through a spiritual realization.

Hans Hofmann
Every work of art is the product of the artist's power for conscious feeling, and of his sensitivity to life-in-nature and life within the limits of his medium.

Hans Hofmann
The knowledge of reality, achieved by means of the complete sensory equipment, must be expressed artistically in terms of a medium which appeals to the memory of all sensory experience — but only through the eye.

Hans Hofmann
It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws.

Hans Hofmann
This two-way transformation proceeds from metaphysical perceptions, for metaphysics is the search for the essential nature of reality. And so artistic creation is the metamorphosis of the external physical aspects of a thing into a self-sustaining spiritual reality. Such is the magic act which takes place continuously in the development of a work of art. On this and only on this is creation based.

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

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.

Hans Hofmann
The encompassing, creative mind recognizes no boundaries. The mind has ever brought new spheres under its control.
All our experiences culminate in the perception of the universe as a whole, with man as its center.

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.

Hans Hofmann
Robert Motherwell: Would you say that a fair statement of your position is that the 'meaning' of a work of art consists of the relations among the elements, and not the elements themselves?
Hofmann: Yes, that I would definitely say. You make a thin line and a thick line. It is the same with geometrical shapes. It is all relationship. Without all these relationships it is not possible to express higher art.

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.

Hans Hofmann
A glimpse heavenward at a constellation or even at a single star only suggests infinity; actually our vision is limited. We cannot perceive unlimited space; it is immeasurable. The universe, as we know it through our visual experience, is limited. It first came into existence with the formation of matter, and will end with the complete dissolution of matter.

Hans Hofmann
The significance of a work of art is determined then by the quality of its growth. This involves intangible forces inherent in the process of development. Although these forces are surreal (that is, their nature is something beyond physical reality), they, nevertheless, depend on a physical carrier. The physical carrier (commonly painting or sculpture) is the medium of expression of the Surreal. Thus, an idea is communicable only when the surreal is converted into material terms. The artist's technical problem is how to transform the material with which he works back into the sphere of the spirit.

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.

Hans Hofmann
A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

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

Hans Hofmann
The product of movement and counter-movement is tension. When tension — working strength — is expressed, it endows the work of art with the living effect of coordinated, though opposing, forces.

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.

Hans Hofmann
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.'

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.

Hans Hofmann
The relative meaning of two physical facts in an emotionally controlled relation always creates the phenomenon of a third fact of a higher order, just as two musical sounds, heard simultaneously create the phenomenon of a third, fourth or fifth. The nature of this higher third is non-physical. In a sense it is magic. Each such phenomenon always overshadows the material qualities and the limited meaning of the basic factors from which it has sprung. For this reason Art expresses the highest quality of the spirit when it is surreal in nature; or, in terms of the visual arts, when it is of a surreal plastic nature.

Hans Hofmann
There is a world of visual beauty open to the one willing to undergo the practice and striving necessary to the understanding of its language.
This world is a important as culturally as is the world of words or of music. My ideal is to form and to paint as Schubert sings his songs and as Beethoven creates his world in sounds. That is to say, creation of one's own inner world through the same human and artistic discipline.
An inner sensation can find external expression only through spiritual realization.

Hans Hofmann
Each expression-medium has a life of its own. Regulated by certain laws, it can be mastered only by intuition during the act of creating. It is in the nature of the laws which govern every expression medium that two separate entities, related through empathy, always produce a higher third of a purely spiritual nature. This spiritual third manifests itself as a quality which carries emotional content. This quality is the opposite of illusion; it is the reality of the spirit.

Hans Hofmann
Then [speaking of his loosely figurative work of the 1930's, in Germany] I was still under nature, not that I was imitating it; now [1957] I am above nature. But everything comes from nature, I too am part of nature; my memory comes from nature, too.

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.

Hans Hofmann
Basically I hate categorical labels. As a young artist I already was very clear about this — that 'objectification' is not the final aim of art. For there are greater things than the object. The greatest thing is the human mind.

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.

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.

Hans Hofmann