Hans Hofmann

My artist is Hans Hofmann, a german abstract expressionist painter who lived during the early to mid 1900's. His paintings during the 40's and 50's were compositions of rectangles of color. He was mainly studying how to use complementing and contrasting colors in order to create a 2D painting that looked somewhat three dimensional. He did this by making some colors pop while some sank into the background, creating depth. He created the Push and Pull theory, in which he used colors to interact with each other instead of one overwhelming another. Hofmann was both an artist and a teacher. He found it really difficult to separate teaching and painting, because when he was painting he made decisions based on instinct and feeling, but when he was teaching he had to focus on every single line and technical aspect of a painting. He was, however, a very successful teacher. He was very successful in his work, and created some timeless artwork.