Hans Hofmann Quotes and Sayings - Page 1

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Inspirational #Business #Mean

“A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Art #World #Emotion

“In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Light #Color #Energy

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

#Nature #Creative #Mind

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

#Art #Expression #Personality

“Painters must speak through paint, not through words.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Speak #Paint #Painter

“The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Color #World #Mystic

“Art is to me the glorification of the human spirit, and as such it is the cultural documentation of the time in which it is produced.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Art #Documentation #Spirit

“Through a painting, we can see the whole world.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#World #Painting

“To sense the invisible and to be able to create it, that is art.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Art #Able #Invisible

“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

#Spiritual #Art #Views

“Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Color #Together #Cogs

“Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Art #Reality #Magic

“It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Color #Form

“To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Development #Worship #Reactions

“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

#Light #Color #Differences

“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

#Black And White #Light #Color

“And so artistic creation is the metamorphosis of the external physical aspects of a thing into a self-sustaining spiritual reality .”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Spiritual #Reality #Self

“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

#Space #Would Be #Able

“The plastic artist may or may not be concerned with presenting a superficial appearance of reality, but he is always concerned with the presentation - if not the representation - of the plastic values of reality.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Reality #Artist #May

“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

#Color #Law #Realization

“Art and science create a balance to material life and enlarge the world of living experience. Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Art #Expression #Profound

“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

#Art #Reality #Civilization

“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

#Teacher #Desire #Students

“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.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Wall #Squares #Ideas

“The impulse of nature, fused through the personality of the artist by laws arising from the particular nature of the medium, produces the rhythm and the personal expression of a work. Then the life of the composition becomes a spiritual unity.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Spiritual #Artist #Expression

“The difference between the arts arises because of the difference in the nature of the mediums of expression and the emphasis induced by the nature of each medium. Each means of expression has its own order of being, its own units.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Art #Mean #Expression

“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

#Art #Flower #Color

“Space expands or contracts in the tensions and functions through which it exists. Space is not a static, inert thing. Space is alive; space is dynamic; space is imbued with movement expressed by forces and counterforces; space vibrates and resounds with color, light and form in the rhythm of life.”
-- Hans Hofmann

#Space #Light #Color

“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 #Movement #Force