During his early studies in Paris, German-American painter Hans Hofmann absorbed the styles of his contemporaries. Most important were Cubists Pablo Picasso, Georges Braques, and Fauvists Henri Matisse and Robert Delaunay. Hofmann fused the Cubists’ interpretation of form with the Fauvists’ philosophy of color to create his own ideas of depth and movement. Hofmann began teaching in America in the 1930’s and became an influential educator. He helped establish the Abstract Expressionist movement in the 1940s, bringing America to the forefront of the art world. Blue Spell embodies his later style, maintaining the integrity of the flat plane of the canvas while manipulating texture and the “push and pull” of color to articulate depth, movement and feeling.
