Atelier (Still Life: Table with White Vase)

Hans Hofmann's Atelier (Still Life, Table with White Vase) of 1938 represents a significant moment in the artist's career, as a prime example of his role as a connection between European Modernism and the developing American style of painting in the 20th century. As an influential art teacher in Europe and throughout the United States starting in 1915, Hofmann drew constantly but had little time to paint. The present work dates to just a few years after the artist returned to painting on a consistent basis, working through early influence of the Cubists and the Fauves, soon reaching full abstraction as a key figure of Abstract Expressionism.

When working in a representational mode in the 1930s-1940s, Hofmann often created several paintings with similar subjects and compositions, experimenting with various elements such as perspective, angles and color palettes. In 1936, he began to paint Atelier around the same time as a group of three other works that featured the same table, vase, and basic compositional structure, eventually returning to this work, refining and reworking it over the next two years, as evidenced by its heavily layered surfaces and dense brushwork. Ultimately, this iteration was the first of its grouping that he chose to exhibit publicly, at his 1948 retrospective at the Addison Gallery of American Art, expressing the artist's own high estimation of this work.

The basis of Hofmann's art, particularly in this period, can be found in European Modernism. After arriving in Paris in 1904, he frequented the legendary Cafe du Dome in the company of artists such as Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque. The composition's fractured forms and distorted perspective evidence this influence of Cubism, and especially Cezanne's groundbreaking experiments with viewing angles and the inclusion of multiple perspectives in a single composition. Hofmann's exuberant use of color also bears the legacy of the Fauvist penchant for vibrant hues. His study of the expressive capability of color takes a cue from the intense color palette of Henri Matisse. The pair were students together in Paris in 1904 at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and Matisse's bold use of color and form were to have a profound influence on Hofmann throughout his career. The descendants of the flat planes of vibrant pigment that comprise the surface of Matisse's masterpiece Red Studio, 1911, have echoes in the present work which furthers the artist's investigation into the visual properties of the basic building blocks of art.

In addition to the 1948 retrospective, Atelier was shown in several important exhibitions, including Poindexter Gallery's 1957 survey of The 30s: Painting in New York and the MoMA-organized traveling exhibition Hans Hofmann and His Students in 1963-1965. Reviewing the Poindexter show, art critic Clement Greenberg described Atelier as an "open painting," which "offers the nearest anticipation in spirit of the 'expressionism' in Abstract Expressionism!' (C. Greenberg, "New York Painting only yesterday;' ArtNews, Summer 1957, p. 86).

As one of the major figures of Abstract Expressionism, Hans Hofmann represents a crucial bridge between European movements such as Cubism and Fauvism and the new bravura style of American painting. It is evident in a painting such as Atelier that Hofmann is formulating a new kind of painterly expression, incorporating Cubist structure and overlapping planes indicating depth and surface, as well as the Fauvist daring use of color and tonal contrasts to evoke a sense of pure and unbridled energy.