“My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, determined exclusively through painterly development, and in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”—Hans Hofmann, 1962
Opening tomorrow at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction is a must-see exhibition of seventy paintings and works on paper by this profoundly influential visual artist and teacher. BAMPFA holds the world’s most extensive museum collection of Hofmann’s paintings, largely due to an extraordinary gift from the artist in recognition of the University’s decisive role in his immigration to the United States from Germany, allowing him to escape the threat of WWII and “start in America as a teacher and artist.” We are proud to have co-published the accompanying catalogue.
The below images were taken at yesterday’s press preview, and provide a small sampling of the exhibition’s delights.
Running February 27–July 21, the exhibition’s opening events include a Curator’s Talk with Lucinda Barnes tomorrow at 12 PM.
