GalleryViews / Midtown

 Hans Hoffman at Ameringer-Yohe Fine Art,
 20 west 57th Street to March 15

This exhibition provides an interesting mini-retrospective of Hoffman�s work ranging from around the  mid 40s to just before his death in the mid 60s. The paintings are drawn from two sources: the artist�s estate and the University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum. In a matter of moments you are able to walk through two decades of history and witness the artist�s progression.  It begins with a flavor of abstraction that has roots in figuration. These paintings from the 40s somewhat recall Picasso�s imagery but also suggest Pollock and Rothko prior to the development of their respective seminal styles. In this work you see a prelude of Hoffman�s own signature style; the flat-colored rectangles set in bright hues of color that shortly followed thereafter.

Hans Hofmann, Moloch I, 1946, oil on canvas, 28 x 57-3/4 in

The next portion of work is made up of his classic large canvases featuring brightly hued backgrounds and rectangles (most of this work is from the Berkley Art Museum). Think �Hans Hoffman� and most likely these are the paintings that first come to mind.  Compared to the preceding work, the paint here becomes thicker and the color more enveloping and vivid. White, which plays a significant supporting role in the earlier paintings, almost disappears. The rectangles, with their sharply defined edges and flat color appear to �float� off the picture plane.  The ground, by contrast, is more organic and loosely handled; edges and color are permitted to bleed into each other. It is this very relationship between a loosely defined grid (as exemplified by the rectangles) and the impulsive handling of other forms embedded within the ground that informs the content for this body of work.

Hans Hoffman Installtion View

Beyond his classic period Hoffman�s work becomes sparser as to forms and color. White reenters the picture plane and in greater quantity. A painting like Delirious Pink recalls the work Ray Parker was doing about the same time; albeit with a great deal more gesture in the forms. In his last years Hoffman reduced his sensibility to

Hans Hofmann, Delirious Pink, 1961, oil on canvas, 64-1/2 x 49-1/2 in

focus on a primary affiliation between form and paint stroke; with mixed results. Gone is any concept, suggestion or relationship to a grid and the color has lost a great deal of purity and vibrancy. It would appear that the artist changed his work significantly in the interest of advancing his oeuvre. But in pieces like Gray Monolith and

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