Artists Hans Hofmann and Nanno de Groot share some common threads. They were both foreign-born painters who had an intense desire to convey nature through abstract expressionism. They were also both important fixtures in the local art colony of Provincetown, Mass.
Today, their work hangs along side one another in Nanno de Groot: Earth, Sea and Sky and Drawings from Hans Hofmann's Figure Drawing Class, a current show at the Acme Gallery in downtown Boston. In the show, which will be open until March 17, a series of charcoal drawings taken from students in Hofmann's renowned figure drawing classes provides a shocking contrast to de Groot's colorful large scale landscapes in which the oil paint is applied so thickly that the scenes feel three-dimensional.
Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) was a predecessor to de Groot and precedes him in the exhibition as well, where his work is the first to be seen. Hofmann was a revered painter, teacher and theorist whose lifetime spanned the eras of post-impressionism, abstraction and everything in between.
Like many other artists in the early 20th century art scene, he was trying to explore modernism and explain the benefits of abstraction. He developed his famous "push pull theory" to describe the plasticity that he wanted to evoke when translating a real-life image onto paper. Hofmann sought to express the tension and reality of natural elements without explicitly drawing them.
The sketches at the Acme Gallery show his attempt to bring this idea out through a number of his students. The drawings are done on inexpensive newsprint paper and are the result of a week's worth of work for the students, who were asked to pick one pose and stick with it. The products have clearly been influenced by a modernist instructor - some show bodies constructed in the cubist vein with square shapes making up body parts, while others don't have any recognizable components at all.
Hofmann would often begin his demonstrations with a small rectangular preparatory sketch, where he would roughly outline the image he was viewing. In his "Figure Study Collaboration" (1954) at the Acme Gallery, one of these rectangles can be seen in the upper right hand corner. A full size figure has been drawn on the same piece of paper, next to the smaller version. According to the gallery director, David Cowan, many art collectors look for these rectangles as a sign of a true Hofmann.
Hofmann taught in Paris, Munich and San Francisco before establishing his own schools in New York City and Provincetown.
With this impressive repertoire, it was no doubt that this powerful presence at least partly lured the Dutch born artist Nanno de Groot (1913-1963) to Provincetown. As a self-taught painter, de Groot experimented with abstraction in New York City for a decade before becoming entranced with the more natural quality of Cape Cod. When he moved to Provincetown in the '60s, his work changed thematically from figures to landscape. He focused on the ocean, flowers and fields. The 15 oil paintings showcased at the Acme Gallery include works after this shift.
There is a high energy and vitality seen throughout de Groot's paintings. In his large "Big Wave" (1960), viewers can see the deep blue of a cresting wave, where the paint has been applied smoothly. They can also sense the great splash of the whitewater as it comes toward them. To get this effect, de Groot layered extremely thick layers of white paint haphazardly on top of the variety of blues.
"Field & Rain" (1960), his vision of a green field absorbing the downpour of a rainstorm, also carries the emotion of the title and is a mix of abstraction and impressionism. The top half of the painting is gray and white. The brush strokes are angled downward and blend into the green bottom half of the panel.
De Groot's other paintings each have their own quality and sentiment. "Sunflowers" (1961) follows the path of his fellow Dutch artist, Vincent van Gogh. The flowers are painted with vibrant yellows and oranges and have an eye-catching, distinct personality.
Together, this quick tour through two artists' mindsets provides an interesting dialog about nature and abstraction in the mid-20th century.
