Painting Collection Hans Hofmann Elongation (1880—1966) German artist Hans Hofmann is often discussed in the context of his teaching career and his influence on the development of Abstract Expressionism in New York, where he arrived in 1933. Yet Hofmann was prolific throughout his career, and is best known for his ‘slab paintings’ filled with thickly painted, rectangular blocks of color. He painted Elongation at a pivotal moment, around the time he decided to stop teaching to focus entirely on his work and just before he developed the ‘slab paintings.’ The aptly-titled Elongation is oddly vertical, measuring around six feet high by a foot and a half wide. The long format of the painting might relate to Hofmann’s brief work on mural commissions around his time. Elongation captures a frenzied but purposeful field of marks—squiggles, dabs, and smears—that are slathered on the board with heavy strokes of paint. Here Hofmann’s gestures are wildly energetic, but his colors are still separate and distinct, anticipating the slabs of color in subsequent works. Hofmann also leaves some of the wooden board bare on the right side, giving a rare look at what lies beneath the paint. |
  
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