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Hans Hoffman
Hans Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880 to Theodor Friedrich Hofmann (1855–1903) and Franziska Manger Hofmann (1849–1921). In 1886, his family moved to Munich, where his father took a job with the government. From a young age, Hofmann gravitated towards science and mathematics. At age sixteen, he followed his father into public service, working for the Bavarian government as assistant to the director of Public Works. He increased his knowledge of mathematics there, eventually developing and patenting devices including an electromagnetic comptometer, a radar device for ships at sea, a sensitized light bulb, and a portable freezer unit for military use. During this time, Hofmann also became interested in creative studies, beginning art lessons between 1898 and 1899 with German artist Moritz Heymann.
Between 1900 and 1904, Hofmann met his future wife, Maria “Miz” Wolfegg (1885–1963) in Munich, and also became acquainted with Philipp Freudenberg, owner of Berlin's high-end department store, Kaufhaus Gerson, and an avid art collector. Freudenberg became Hofmann's patron over the next decade, enabling him to relocate and live in Paris with Miz.[6] In Paris, Hofmann studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and Académie Colarossi.[8][9] He also immersed himself in Paris's avant-garde art scene, working with Matisse and becoming friends with Picasso, Georges Braque, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay.[2] Hoffman worked and exhibited in Paris until the onset of World War I, producing paintings most influenced by the Cubists and Cézanne. Forced to return to Germany, and excluded from military service because of a respiratory condition, Hofmann opened an art school in Munich in 1915, developing a reputation as a forward-thinking instructor. In 1930, he was invited to teach on the west coast of the United States, which ultimately paved the way for him to permanently settle in the United States in 1932, where he resided until the end of his life. Hofmann and Miz would live apart for six years, until she procured an immigration visa to the United States in 1939.
Between 1933 and 1958, Hofmann balanced his studio work with teaching, and as he did in Paris, immersed himself in (and influenced) New York's growing avant-garde art scene. He reopened his art school in 1934, conducting classes in New York and in Provincetown during summer.[8] In 1941, he became an American citizen. During this time, his work drew increasing attention and acclaim critics, dealers and museums. In 1958, he retired from teaching to focus on painting, which led to a late-career efflorescence (at age seventy-eight) of his work.[2] In 1963, Miz Hofmann, his partner and wife for over sixty years, passed away after a surgery. Two years later, Hofmann married Renate Schmitz, who remained with him until his death from a heart attack in New York City on February 17, 1966, just prior to his 86th birthday.
Hofmann's works are in the permanent collections of many major museums in the United States and throughout the world, including the: UC Berkeley Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Art Institute of Chicago, Seattle Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Cleveland Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Munich), Museu d'Art Contemporani, (Barcelona), Tate Gallery, Art Museum of West Virginia University, and the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). Hofmann also designed a public work, a colorful mural located outside the entrance of the High School of Graphic Communication Arts located in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.
In 2015, at a Christie's New York auction, Hofmann's Auxerre (1960), inspired by the expansive stained glass windows of the Cathédrale Saint Etienne in France, achieved a world auction record for the artist at $6,325,000
When Hofmann died on February 17, 1966, his widow, Renate Hofmann, managed his Estate. After Renate's death in 1992, the New York Daily News published an article titled, "From Caviar to Cat Food," which detailed the "sad and tortuous story" of Hofmann's widow. The article contended that Renate's court appointed guardians "milk[ed] the Estate for more than a decade" and allowed the mentally unstable Renate to live "with her cats and liquor in a garbage-strewn oceanfront home."[36] Under threat of prosecution, the original executor of the Hofmann Estate, Robert Warshaw, was successful in having the neglectful guardians pay $8.7 million to the Estate for "extraordinary conscious pain and suffering."
Under the will of Renate Hofmann, The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust was formally created with Warshaw at its head. The mission of the Trust is "to promote the study and understanding of Hans Hofmann's extraordinary life and works" and to accomplish these goals "through exhibitions, publications and educational activities and programs focusing on Hans Hofmann"[37] as well as a catalogue raisonné of Hofmann's paintings.[38] The U.S. copyright representative for the Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust is the Artists Rights Society.
courtesy-wikipedia

- Hans Hoffman

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