The art of Hans Hofmann, a towering figure among postwar New York School painters, is the subject of the exhibition, Walls of Color: The Murals of Hans Hofmann. Famed for his push/pull spatial theories and dynamic approach to color, Hofmann was not only a revered painter, but also the most important teacher and theoretician of the Abstract Expressionist movement. The complex structures of Hofmann’s abstract canvases explode with vivid hues, each work a distinct expression of his highly evolved “Search for the Real,” the title of his influential books of essays of 1948.

This exhibition is the first to focus on Hans Hofmann’s varied and under-appreciated mural projects. By incorporating a number of the finest examples of the artist’s contemporaneous easel paintings (as well as key paintings leading up to and following his mural work), the exhibition will demonstrate the continuity and evolution of Hofmann’s oeuvre, culminating in the late, great so-called Slab paintings, where both the assertive planarity of the murals and the modular, colored mosaic elements achieved their final, sublime expression.

The exhibition explores Hofmann’s public mosaic projects through paintings, mosaic studies and project drawings. It showcases the collaboration between José Luis Sert and Hofmann from 1950 for the Peruvian town of Chimbote.

Generously underwritten by Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust.