Elysium

German immigrant Hans Hofmann founded art schools in the mid-1930s in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, and quickly became the most influential art teacher of his generation. He provided countless American students with a thorough understanding of the principles of the European avant-garde, and stressed to them the importance of establishing a dynamic equilibrium of image, surface, and composition in abstract painting. Noted for his brilliant understanding of theory and technique, Hofmann was the kind of gifted instructor who encouraged students to branch out in their own independent directions. Among those who studied with him were Louise Nevelson, Alfred Jensen, and Larry Rivers. In his own vibrant works, including three in the Blanton’s collection, Hofmann used a Cubist-like, grid-based pictorial structure to impose order upon the wild expressiveness of his high-keyed, opposing colors and rich, impastoed surfaces. His best paintings, like Elysium, created when he was eighty years old, achieve harmony within intensity, and embody both tension and balance. About the title, Hofmann said to collector James Michener, “It’s where old artists go when they die. It’s very clean and simple—only a nest of squares, but they tell everything.”