Quote

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

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Hans Hofmann
Age: 85 †
Born: 1880
Born: January 1
Died: 1966
Died: January 1
Architect
Artist
Drawer
Painter
Weißenburg/Bayern
Hans Georg Albert Hofmann
Johann Georg Albert Hofmann
Johann Hofmann
Hans Hoffman
Hans. Hofmann
Hans Hofmann (1880-1966)
Hofmann
Form
Mere
Organism
Self
Flower
Texture
Work
Color
Reflecting
World
Emotion
Organisms
Virtue
Sufficient
Ornamental
Existence
Senses
Ornament
Artist
Emotions
Ornaments
Art
Complete
Singular

More quotes by Hans Hofmann

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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
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Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist.
Hans Hofmann
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It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form.
Hans Hofmann
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To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction.
Hans Hofmann
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Our entire being is nourished by color.
Hans Hofmann
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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
Hans Hofmann
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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
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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
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In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.
Hans Hofmann
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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
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To experience visually, and to transform our visual experience into plastic terms, requires the faculty of empathy.
Hans Hofmann
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Painters must speak through paint, not through words.
Hans Hofmann
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Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony.
Hans Hofmann
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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
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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
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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.
Hans Hofmann
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Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects.
Hans Hofmann
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Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel.
Hans Hofmann
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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
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It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.
Hans Hofmann