Push and Pull: Hans Hofmann

August 31–December 11, 2016

Push and Pull: Hans Hofmann showcases signature works that manifest Hofmann’s dynamic painterly approach.

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Hans Hofmann, Combinable Wall I and II, 1961; oil on canvas; 84 1/4 x 112 1/2 in.; BAMPFA Collection, gift of Hans Hofmann

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Selected Exhibition Objects

Painting

The Vanquished

Hans Hofmann

1959
oil and enamel on canvas
36 1/8 x 48 1/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Bequest of the artist
1966.49
Painting

Combinable Wall, I and II

Hans Hofmann

1961
oil on canvas
84 1/2 x 112 1/2 in. (width combined)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Hans Hofmann
1963.10
Painting

Heraldic Call

Hans Hofmann

1963
oil and duco on canvas
60 1/4 x 48 3/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Hans Hofmann
1965.17
Painting

Imperium in Imperio

Hans Hofmann

1964
oil on canvas
84 1/8 x 52 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Bequest of the artist
1966.43
Painting

The Clash

Hans Hofmann

1964
oil on canvas
52 1/8 x 60 1/4 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Hans Hofmann
1965.8

Past Events

Saturday, October 15, 1 PM
Ken Jacobs, Search for the Real / Delight with Illusion

Unfortunately, Ken Jacobs had to cancel his previously announced visit to the Bay Area. We will instead present a recorded version of his planned lecture along with a selection of his films, influenced by Hans Hofmann.

BAMPFA

Lecture

Push and Pull: Hans Hofmann

August 31–December 11, 2016

Hans Hofmann’s famous phrase “push and pull” is most often associated with his signature works of the 1950s and 1960s, in which bold color planes emerge from and recede into energetic surfaces of intersecting and overlapping shapes. The ideas and impulses behind this enduring term, however, took shape decades earlier, in his teachings, writings, and in his own paintings. In the late 1930s, in a series of widely attended lectures in Greenwich Village, Hofmann demonstrated how to “push a plane in the surface or to pull it from the surface” to create pictorial space. “We must create pictorial space,” he declared to audiences of avid young artists and critics, including Arshile Gorky, Clement Greenberg, and Harold Rosenberg. Hofmann would later refine his definition of push and pull as “expanding and contracting forces . . . . the picture plane reacts automatically in the opposite direction to the stimulus received; thus...

"Pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light."

Push and Pull: Hans Hofmann brings together signature paintings from BAMPFA’s distinguished collection of the artist’s work, such as Combinable Wall, I and II (1961) and Magnum Opus (1962). In 1963, at the height of his internationally acclaimed career, the artist donated nearly fifty paintings to UC Berkeley in recognition of the University’s important role in his early career. He first came to the United States from Germany in 1930 to teach in UC Berkeley’s Department of Art, at the invitation of Worth Ryder. From Berkeley, Hofmann went on to New York, where he established his famed and influential art schools. By the late 1940s Hofmann was also recognized as a progressive, avant-garde painter and one of the originators of Abstract Expressionism. In 1958, at the age of seventy-eight, Hofmann closed his schools and returned to his studio full-time, for the first time in over forty years. In this last decade of his life, he produced an astounding body of energetic, masterful paintings. “My aim,” he stated in 1962, “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."

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This exhibition is organized by Chief Curator and Director of Programs and Collections Lucinda Barnes.

Push and Pull: Hans Hofmann

August 31–December 11, 2016

Selected Exhibition Objects

Painting

The Vanquished

Hans Hofmann

Painting

Combinable Wall, I and II

Hans Hofmann

Painting

Heraldic Call

Hans Hofmann

Painting

Imperium in Imperio

Hans Hofmann

Painting

The Clash

Hans Hofmann

Past Events

Ken Jacobs, Search for the Real / Delight with Illusion