Hans Hofmann

Kootz Gallery, New York
Private Collection, California
By descent to the present owner

 New York, Kootz Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Recent Paintings, October – November 1952

This work is in good condition overall. There is scattered craquelure throughout and some small areas of pigment loss, mostly along the edges. There is some surface soiling. Under Ultraviolet light inspection, there are a few scattered, minor areas of inpainting. Framed.
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This work will be included in the forthcoming Hans Hofmann Catalogue Raisonné, sponsored by the Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust."Hans Hofmann’s art is a controlled explosion."  _{John I. H. Bauer}

Composition No. 2 from  1952, is an outsanding example of a series of paintings, stretching back to the early 1940s, in which the artist grapples with the tensions between line and plane.  While colors of differing temperature flex across the actual flatness of the picture plane, powerful lines meander around the surface, sometimes seemingly below the surface; in other places resting atop it.  The very powerful but different natures of line and plane can co-exist as in Composition No. 2.

The overall effect of this work resembles the contemporaneous paintings of Jackson Pollock.  The latter’s paintings are regarded as the product of an unfettered, spontaneous impulsiveness. On the other hand, that procedure is antithetical to the structured, theoretical methodology of Hofmann, whose crowning achievement was to teach, formally, a generation of vibrant Abstract Expressionist artists.  Quite how such a seemingly spontaneous composition can emerge from the disciplined mind and hand of a pedagogue is one of the enduring mysteries of his art.