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Thank you to blog reader Anne from Massachusetts who alerted me to this show. I was glad to get to see it last Friday when I was in Boston for something else. I had never been to the Peabody Essex Museum before, but it is a lovely one, very much worthy of a visit. This terrific Hans Hofmann show is up from now to January.

I have always loved Hans Hofmann. I remember looking at books my mother had of his paintings when I was just a toddler. I love his bright colors and very textural surfaces. I love his ideas about not painting matter, but instead focusing on “spiritual synthesis.” He taught most of the famous abstract expressionists, and left quite a legacy.

Below you can pretty much see the whole show. Where you can see the edges of the painting, you’ll know that is an entire work. Otherwise, there are close up details showing his paint application, which was sometimes very goopy and heavy-handed, and sometimes extremely thinned down. I’m not a fan of all these works, but seen together, one can get a sense of his trajectory. I’m so glad I got to see these in person!

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