Still Life - Table with Vases and Cupboard

Hans Hofmann was an influential teacher in both his native Germany and in the United States, where he spent the last decades of his life. His paintings, and those of his students’ (including painters Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell), had a significant impact on the post-World War II abstraction movement in American art.

Hofmann believed in the spiritual power of art, using bright color as a means of expression. In this work, strong composition and an active painted surface reveal a still life of the act of painting a still life.