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Lot Essay
From the prestigious collection of Phyllis and C. Douglas Dillon, the superior quality of Moonlit was recognized immediately when acquired in 1970 from André Emmerich Gallery in New York City. Mr. Douglas Dillon was the former Secretary of Treasury and Ambassador to France and deeply passionate about the arts, having served as the Chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Mrs. Phyllis Dillon dedicated her life to philanthropic affairs, having served on the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Mrs. Dillon was also the first wife of an American ambassador to be presented with the Legion of Honor in 1957.
Painted in 1958, Hans Hofmann’s Moonlit is a powerful culmination of the artist’s growth and maturation, created during an era of mounting critical acclaim for the artist. 1958 also marked the year that Hofmann would devote himself to painting full-time and stopped teaching at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. Moonlit offers an array of vibrant, opposing colors that alternately advance and recede according to Hofmann’s “push and pull” technique. The result—an intense, painterly creation—exhibits the passion of an artist who dedicated his life to the pursuit of his craft.
Stylistically, many of the elements of Moonlit are reflected in his later paintings throughout the early 1960s leading up to his death in 1966, known as ‘Slab’ paintings. As Karen Wilkin has written in the artist’s catalogue raisonné, “Hofmann’s ’slab’ pictures, with their saturated hues and urgent paint application, are his most sought-after and readily recognized works. Intensely colored, pulsing rectangles have become emblematic of the artist” (K. Wilkin “Hans Hofmann: Tradition and Innovation,” in S. Villiger, ed., Hans Hofmann: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Volume I, Farnham, 2014, p. 46). The rectangular forms in the ‘slab’ style are present in Hofmann’s paintings in the late 1950s as well, and Moonlit shows the early workings of what would become the artist’s most iconic series of work.
The symphony of colors that flow throughout the painting in some regard run counter to the painting’s title Moonlit, perhaps a nod to “nocturne painting,” describing the depiction of scenes evocative of the nighttime or how subjects appear in a veil of light, the absence of direct light or twilight. That said, Hofmann’s unwavering exploration and mastery of color reminds the viewer that the emotive power of color is limitless, and that even in twilight, colors can dance. Ever since Gauguin espoused that “…color, which is vibration, just as music is, is able to attain what is most universal yet at the same time most elusive in nature: its inner force” (P. Gauguin, quoted by S. Hunter, J. Jacobus, D. Wheeler, eds., Modern Art, New York, 2004, p. 118), artists have been fascinated by the spiritual nature of chromatic pigments. Thus, Hofmann is following in a noble tradition of colorists from Wassily Kandinsky to Mark Rothko, who approached color with an emotive sensibility.
Vibrantly colored and creatively balanced, Moonlit exemplifies Hofmann’s keen eye and mastery for color and form, where bright slabs play against each other as certain colors recede and others advance. Hofmann believed this was the root of all painting, saying “only from the varied counter play of push and pull, and from its variation in intensities, will plastic creation result” (H. Hofmann, quoted in W. C. Seitz, Hans Hofmann, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1963, p. 27). The tug of war between geometric form and abstraction is at the heart of Moonlit. The painting’s background is rendered in deep, yellow pigment on the top of the canvas, and a slightly darker orange on the lower half. There is distinct separation between the two halves through a soft uneven horizontal line across the canvas, and the line is the central abstract portion of the painting. Hofmann builds up the geometric elements, mimicking the yellow and orange in respective rectangles at the top and bottom of the canvas. These rectangles have slightly uneven edges and they fade into the background. The red and green rectangles, with sharp thickly painted edges, sit on top of the canvas, drawing attention from the top of the canvas down. Like Rothko's radiating orbs, Moonlit’s layered composition jumps off the painted surface—breathing life into each color and form.
Moonlit is a gradual escalation from abstraction to geometric form, in which Hofmann is experimenting with opposing approaches, yet all the forms on the canvas rely on one another to build compositional harmony. Moonlit is a powerful example of the artist’s lifelong devotion to and exploration of the fundamental principles of painting. The powerful sense of energy, neatly expressed into rectangular forms that advance and recede from the canvas, makes the present work one of the artist’s most accomplished paintings of this era.
Painted in 1958, Hans Hofmann’s Moonlit is a powerful culmination of the artist’s growth and maturation, created during an era of mounting critical acclaim for the artist. 1958 also marked the year that Hofmann would devote himself to painting full-time and stopped teaching at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. Moonlit offers an array of vibrant, opposing colors that alternately advance and recede according to Hofmann’s “push and pull” technique. The result—an intense, painterly creation—exhibits the passion of an artist who dedicated his life to the pursuit of his craft.
Stylistically, many of the elements of Moonlit are reflected in his later paintings throughout the early 1960s leading up to his death in 1966, known as ‘Slab’ paintings. As Karen Wilkin has written in the artist’s catalogue raisonné, “Hofmann’s ’slab’ pictures, with their saturated hues and urgent paint application, are his most sought-after and readily recognized works. Intensely colored, pulsing rectangles have become emblematic of the artist” (K. Wilkin “Hans Hofmann: Tradition and Innovation,” in S. Villiger, ed., Hans Hofmann: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Volume I, Farnham, 2014, p. 46). The rectangular forms in the ‘slab’ style are present in Hofmann’s paintings in the late 1950s as well, and Moonlit shows the early workings of what would become the artist’s most iconic series of work.
The symphony of colors that flow throughout the painting in some regard run counter to the painting’s title Moonlit, perhaps a nod to “nocturne painting,” describing the depiction of scenes evocative of the nighttime or how subjects appear in a veil of light, the absence of direct light or twilight. That said, Hofmann’s unwavering exploration and mastery of color reminds the viewer that the emotive power of color is limitless, and that even in twilight, colors can dance. Ever since Gauguin espoused that “…color, which is vibration, just as music is, is able to attain what is most universal yet at the same time most elusive in nature: its inner force” (P. Gauguin, quoted by S. Hunter, J. Jacobus, D. Wheeler, eds., Modern Art, New York, 2004, p. 118), artists have been fascinated by the spiritual nature of chromatic pigments. Thus, Hofmann is following in a noble tradition of colorists from Wassily Kandinsky to Mark Rothko, who approached color with an emotive sensibility.
Vibrantly colored and creatively balanced, Moonlit exemplifies Hofmann’s keen eye and mastery for color and form, where bright slabs play against each other as certain colors recede and others advance. Hofmann believed this was the root of all painting, saying “only from the varied counter play of push and pull, and from its variation in intensities, will plastic creation result” (H. Hofmann, quoted in W. C. Seitz, Hans Hofmann, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1963, p. 27). The tug of war between geometric form and abstraction is at the heart of Moonlit. The painting’s background is rendered in deep, yellow pigment on the top of the canvas, and a slightly darker orange on the lower half. There is distinct separation between the two halves through a soft uneven horizontal line across the canvas, and the line is the central abstract portion of the painting. Hofmann builds up the geometric elements, mimicking the yellow and orange in respective rectangles at the top and bottom of the canvas. These rectangles have slightly uneven edges and they fade into the background. The red and green rectangles, with sharp thickly painted edges, sit on top of the canvas, drawing attention from the top of the canvas down. Like Rothko's radiating orbs, Moonlit’s layered composition jumps off the painted surface—breathing life into each color and form.
Moonlit is a gradual escalation from abstraction to geometric form, in which Hofmann is experimenting with opposing approaches, yet all the forms on the canvas rely on one another to build compositional harmony. Moonlit is a powerful example of the artist’s lifelong devotion to and exploration of the fundamental principles of painting. The powerful sense of energy, neatly expressed into rectangular forms that advance and recede from the canvas, makes the present work one of the artist’s most accomplished paintings of this era.