Adam HOFFMANN, Scene in the Studio

Carbon, paper, 48 x 59 (framed), signed l.d.: AH 1964.

Adam Hoffmann was born in Krakow on May 4, 1918, and died in Krakow on March 3, 2001. He began his studies in 1938 at the Jagiellonian University and at Alfred Terlecki's private school of drawing and painting. He continued his studies during the occupation at the Kunstgewerbeschule, and in 1945-48 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (in the painting studios of Władysław Jarocki and Eugeniusz Eibisch and in the graphics studio of Konrad Srzednicki). Pedagogue at art high schools in Katowice and Cracow, and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, at the Katowice branch, and at the Cracow Department of Graphics. A draughtsman, painter, he also worked on posters. As an artist, he remained in opposition to the trend of avant-garde painting. He created his own individual world. The main theme of Adam Hoffmann's art is the relationship between a man and a woman, which he depicted grotesquely, caricatured and sarcastically. He invoked biblical (Salome), mythological (The Abduction of Europa) and Shakespearean motifs, but actually created his own iconography.