Hans Hofmann Short Quotes

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To sense the invisible and to be able to create it — that is art.

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

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

Hans Hofmann
A work is endowed with inner greatness by the technical means which parallels the artist's experience and human discipline.

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

Hans Hofmann
At the time of making a picture, I want not to know what I am doing.; a picture should me made with feeling, not with knowing.

Hans Hofmann
A work of art is finished, from the point of view of the artist, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis.

Hans Hofmann
There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations.

Hans Hofmann
I am many people.
Technique is always the consequence of the dominating concept.... with the change of concept, technique will change.

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
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.

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

Hans Hofmann
We are connected with our own age if we recognize ourselves in relation to outside events; and we have grasped its spirit when we influence the future.

Hans Hofmann
I can't understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism. Despite the general pessimistic attitude in the world today, I am nothing but an optimist.

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

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
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
The aim of art, so far as one can speak of an aim at all, has always been the same; the blending of experience gained in life with the natural qualities of the art medium.

Hans Hofmann
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.

Hans Hofmann
Artistic intuition is the basis for confidence of the spirit. Art is a reflection of the spirit, a result of introspection, which finds expression in the nature of the art medium.

Hans Hofmann
An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea.

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
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
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. Simplification is the essence of abstraction from which objective values are not necessarily eliminated.

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