The German painter Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) approached abstract painting through Cubism and Fauvism. His teaching and painting were singularly influential for the development of American painting after 1945. Born in Weissenburg, Germany, Hans Hofmann...

Hans Hofmann made his first trip to the United States in 1930 at the request of a former student of the artist's Munich art school. He had been asked to serve as a guest professor for a summer session at the University of...

Hans Hofmann, Untitled, 1943, ink on paper, 11 X 8 1/2 inches, A/Y #1652. [c] 2005 Estate of Hans Hofmann/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, New York. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Hans Hofmann, Student with Spectacles, 1926,...

There are currents of influence on the contemporary art scene so pervasive that, in retrospect, they seem to define an entire era. For a good many artists and critics who came of age in the heyday of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the 1940's and...

What does John Updike know about art, anyway? Enough to write about it perceptively. The renowned novelist’s art criticism appears in The New York Review of Books and has been collected in a newly published book. But he doesn’t know enough—or, perhaps it is better...