Adam Hoffmann (1918–2001)
Dance, 1950s/1960s
gouache, ink on paper, 39.6 x 29.7 cm
signed lower right: Adam Hoffmann
He began his studies in 1938 at Jagiellonian University and at Alfred Terlecki’s private school of drawing and painting. During the occupation, he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule, and from 1945 to 1948 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (in the painting studios of Władysław Jarocki and Eugeniusz Eibisch, and in the printmaking studio of Konrad Srzednicki). He taught at art high schools in Katowice and Kraków, and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków—at its Katowice branch and at the Department of Graphic Arts in Kraków. A draftsman and painter, he also worked in poster art. Adam Hoffmann was a contemporary of the artists from the Kraków Group; he was friends with Jerzy Nowosielski and Jerzy Skarżyński, but as an artist he remained in opposition to the avant-garde movement in painting. He created his own, unique world. The main theme of Adam Hoffmann’s art is the relationship between men and women, which he depicted in a grotesque, caricatured, and sarcastic manner. He drew on biblical motifs (Salome), mythological themes (The Abduction of Europa), and Shakespearean motifs, but in essence he created his own iconography. At first glance, viewers of the artist’s drawings see a world that simply seems ugly to them, but later, for many, it becomes fascinating; they discover the artist’s wisdom and realize that the world seen through his eyes is incredibly funny.
Adam Hoffmann participated in an exhibition of young artists at the “Arsenal” in Warsaw in 1955. Among his solo exhibitions were those in Warsaw—drawings and paintings at Kordegarda (1966) and drawings at Zachęta (1972)—as well as a drawing exhibition in Kraków at the Palace of Art (1973). In 2003, the National Museum in Kraków organized a major retrospective exhibition of the artist’s works titled “Adam Hoffmann: The Draftsman.”
