Hans Hofmann

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

“What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation.”

“The art of pictorial creation is so complicated - it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the...”

“An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea.”

“When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon mastery of the medium.”

“Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we...”

“Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind.”

“Art is to me the glorification of the human spirit, and as such it is the cultural documentation of the time in which it is produced.”

“My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”

“It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws.”

“Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials...”

“The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.”