Art Brokerage: 1880-1966 - Artist Hans Hofmann's incredible imagery inspired his students as well as artists throughout the world. From his smaller works on paper to his larger paintings, they are all unique and powerful. Hoffman has been called a Fauvist, Cubist, and Abstract Expressionist. He used aspects of all these styles to create his own personal style. The key to Hofmann's paintings is his passion for nature, whether perceived on location, from memory, or imagination. Hofmann incessantly probed natural elements, focusing on volume, and geometric forms in positive and negative spaces. It was the object, he said, that creates the negative or positive space, not, as traditionally conceived, that an object is placed in a space. If an object creates space, then it is light that creates form. Similarly, light makes color in nature, but color creates light in painting.