Hans Hofmann Quotes

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  • Painter
  • 1880 - 1966
  • 65 quotes

Hans Hofmann, a painter (1880 - 1966), is quoted 65 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Art, Expression, Color and Painting.

Quotes with a ready-made image come first, then the rest in order of how often they are read and shared. Open any quote to copy it, share it, or turn it into a picture quote.

Our entire being is nourished by color.

Through a painting we can see the whole world.

Through a painting, we can see the whole world.

To me, art is the glorification of the human spirit.

Painters must speak through paint, not through words.

Art is the expression of the artist´s overflowing soul.

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

I can't understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism.

Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel.

Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects.

In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.

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

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

It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form.

To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction.

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.

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

You must break all the rules of painting, but you must also convince me you've had a reason to do so.

People say 'Hofmann has different styles'. I have not. I have different moods; I am not two days the same man.

To experience visually, and to transform our visual experience into plastic terms, requires the faculty of empathy.

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

Genius is gifted with a vitality which is expended in the enrichment of life through the discovery of new worlds of feeling.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color. Our entire being is nourished by it. This mystic quality of color should likewise find expression in a work of art.

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.

A thing in itself never expresses anything. It is the relation between things that gives meaning to them and that formulates a thought. A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

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.

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.

The child is really an artist, and the artist should be like a child, but he should not stay a child. He must become an artist. That means he cannot permit himself to become sentimental or something like that. He must know what he is doing

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 is quoted on

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