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
Self
Flower
Texture
Work
Color
Reflecting
World
Emotion
Organisms
Virtue
Sufficient
Ornamental
Existence
Senses
Ornament
Artist
Emotions
Ornaments
Art
Complete
Singular
Form
Mere
Organism

More quotes by 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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To experience visually, and to transform our visual experience into plastic terms, requires the faculty of empathy.
Hans Hofmann
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Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world.
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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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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Genius is gifted with a vitality which is expended in the enrichment of life through the discovery of new worlds of feeling.
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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Painters must speak through paint, not through words.
Hans Hofmann
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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
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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
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Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind.
Hans Hofmann
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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
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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
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In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.
Hans Hofmann
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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
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Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist.
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 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
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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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Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects.
Hans Hofmann