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Richard Francis Hofmann, painter, muralist and mixed media artist, was born in Newark, NJ in 1954. After earning a BFA at Pratt Institute, he lived and painted in the East Village during the tumultuous 1980s. His murals decorated such clubs as Danceteria, Pyramid and Limbo Lounge. Displaying a passion for large-scale figurative oil painting, he followed his own interpretation of Neo-Expressionism, exhibiting at such venues as ABC NO RIO, Fashion Moda, Limbo Gallery, Steven Adams Gallery and others. His work tackled the larger questions of sin and redemption, religion and homosexuality, suffering and ecstasy, with fervid brushstrokes and layers of intense color. After a final visit to California, he returned to NYC where he died of AIDs in 1994 at the age of 39.
Hofmann’s extraordinary and versatile trove of work, including preserved club murals, oil paintings, portfolios of watercolors, photo lithographs, etchings, mixed media collages and artist books, was unwrapped in a monumental 2016 Brooklyn solo exhibition and subsequently featured in the 2019 About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art exhibition at Chicago's Wrightwood659 Gallery. His work is also featured in the 2024 publication of the accompanying art book "About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and the New Queer Art" by professor Jonathan D. Katz.
Heinrich von Kesseler, director of Artabolic Arts Management, curated a 2023 gallery show back in the East Village a couple of blocks from where much of Richard's artwork was created. The show was entitled "Love and Kisses from the East Village, 1986" and featured inexpensive reproductions of the original oils and watercolor paintings.
In 2024 Heinrich displayed the vastHofmann art estate collection to the public for the first time as part of "Red Hook Open Studios", Brooklyn.
The Richard Francis Hofmann Estate Art collection is managed by Artabolic Arts Management. Please inquire for purchase, representation, consignment, loans and documentary showings.
Heinrich von Kesseler https://artabolic.com director@artabolic.com 917 862-0965
Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1954, Richard’s unusual talents were evident early on, with his first watercolor show at the age of three. Educated at George Washington University and later earning a BFA in Painting from the Pratt Institute, he was also the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1989. After moving to Avenue C in Alphabet City, Hofmann worked as an art installer and art assistant while continuing his own career as a fine artist.
A familiar figure in the East Village art scene for many years, Richard’s savage style of Neo-Expressionist figurative painting earned him a place among the “New Irascibles,” showcased in *Arts Magazine* in 1985. He worked in media such as film, sculpture, photo lithography, watercolors, collage, charcoal, and even clothing. His murals decorated clubs over the years, including Club 57, The Pyramid Lounge, Danceteria, and the Roxy.
But his forte was oil painting, and it is in the large 9’x 15’ canvases that his technique is most evident and his message most revealing.
He was featured in solo shows at notable Lower East Side venues such as Limbo Gallery, ABC NO RIO, and the Steven Adams Gallery. Hofmann participated in numerous group shows, including *Pain and Pleasure* alongside Robert Mapplethorpe at Fashion Moda (1984), *Figures* at Green Street Gallery (1983), and *Famous and Infamous* (1983) at Gracie Mansion Gallery.
A ceaseless and prolific painter, the art of Richard Hofmann provides an unflinching window onto the tragic world of the young gay artist caught up in the AIDS epidemic, which devastated New York just as this unprecedented art scene was blossoming.
A contemporary and personal friend of David Wojnarowicz and many other artists who suffered the same fate, Hofmann’s work is a rare time capsule of bold colors and iconoclastic themes that leap off the canvas—perhaps even more today than back then.
His style has often been characterized as belonging to the school of Neo-Expressionism, although his unique use of distorted figures and a multiplicity of baleful human faces remains distinctively his own. One critic noted that Hofmann “tackled the larger questions of sin and redemption, religion and homosexuality, suffering and ecstasy with fervid brushstrokes and layers of intense color.”
POSTHUMOUS GALLERY EXHIBITIONS AND DOCUMENTARY SCREENINGS
2024: Richard Hofmann artwork presentations throughout Red Hook Open Studios event, October, Brooklyn.
2022: Richard Hofmann Solo Retrospective Gallery Show *Love and Kisses from the East Village, 1986* at Titan's Greenery Art Gallery, NYC.
2021: Live presentation of the documentary *Fear and Desire: The Life and Death of Richard Hofmann* at the 4th Annual Mystic Film Festival, Mystic, Connecticut.
2019: Wrightwood 659 Gallery, *About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art*, Chicago.
2018: Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Gallery, *Painting to Survive*, Group Show, Brooklyn.
2017: Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Gallery, Curated Richard Hofmann Solo Retrospective, Brooklyn.
2009: The Life Cafe, *Gone but not Forgotten*, Group Show, NYC.
**Previous Solo Exhibitions**
1985: Barbara Braathen Gallery, NYC; Steven Adams Gallery, NYC.
1984: Limbo Gallery, NYC.
1983: Fashion Moda, *Visions of Heaven and Hell*; ABC NO RIO, *7 Days of Creation*; Limbo Gallery, *Siren and Flytrap*; Terminal Show, *Michael Stewart Mural*, NYC.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
In 1990, Hofmann's work was featured in the Tent City Benefit Auction at Max Fish in NYC, as well as at Ground Zero Gallery in NYC.
In 1989, his pieces were shown at Bratton Gallery in NYC, Naked Eye Cinema in Detroit, The New York Gay and Lesbian Experimental Film Festival in NYC with the exhibition "Drag," Anthology Film Archives in NYC, Tim Stauffler Gallery in NYC, Michigan Gallery in Detroit, Leonard Beach Hotel Murals in Miami Beach, and Galaxy Gallery in Miami Beach.
In 1988, he exhibited at Nancy Lurie in Chicago, Arthur Robbins in NYC, HEAL Benefit at ABC NO RIO in NYC, and La MaMa E.T.C. for the "Trocadero Ballet Set" in NYC.
In 1987, his exhibitions included Cassus Toledo Oosterum in NYC, "Cloichina" at The Kitchen in NYC, "Swingin'" at The Pyramid Night Club in NYC, and "NY Cultural Center" at ABC NO RIO in NYC.
In 1986, Hofmann participated in "Gallery Artists" at Steven Adams Gallery in NYC.
In 1985, his work was displayed at The Pyramid Night Club in the "Historica Pagentia Fashionia" show in NYC, Danceteria Night Club in NYC, ABC NO RIO's "The First Five Years" Exhibition/Auction in NYC, "NY for NY" at The Roxy Night Club in NYC, "Ground Zero Stencil Show" at Instant Museum in Boston, "The Cracked Mirror Show" at NADA Gallery in NYC, "Five Years of NO RIO GRAPHICS" at ABC NO RIO in NYC, "Avenue C by the Sea" at Tower Gallery in Southampton, NY, "Getting Off" at Civilian Warfare in NYC, "The Adams Family" at Steven Adams Gallery in NYC, "The Possibilities of Limitations" at ABC NO RIO in NYC, and the Life Cafe Auction at 8BC Night Club in NYC. Additionally, he exhibited at Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires.
In 1984, Hofmann's work appeared at the University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara in "Neo York," New Math Gallery's "In Vogue" exhibition in NYC, "Pain and Pleasure" at Fashion Moda in NYC, "New Portrait" at P.S.1 in NYC, Cleveland Art Spaces in Cleveland, OH, "Sculpture Jungle" at Limbo Gallery in NYC, Vinnie Salas Food Stamp Parlor's Food Stamp Show in NYC, an auction at Gracie Mansion Gallery in NYC, and "Food for the Soup Kitchens" at Fashion Moda in NYC.
In 1983, his group exhibitions included "Resurrection" at Middle Collegiate Church in NYC, "Wish You Were Here" at ABC NO RIO in NYC, "Figures" at Green Street Gallery in NYC, "The Wild West" at Piezo Electric Gallery in NYC, "Aesthetics of War" at Terminal in NYC, "Famous and Infamous" at Gracie Mansion Gallery in NYC, and "Extremist Manifesto" at ABC NO RIO in NYC.
REVIEWS
These magisterial expressionist paintings … hover between paint and embodiment, flesh and the spirit, their haunted, death-obsessed forms and writing imagery surfacing an apocalyptic vision of the human condition all too familiar form the early days of AIDS. Professor Johnathan D. Katz in his just published book “About Face: Stonewall, Revolt, and New Queer Art” (2024) (buy on Amazon with Artabolic affiliate code)
Flickering between horror and beauty, Richard Hofmann's paintings burn their way into the mind of the viewer as if they were lit by an inferno... here emotional volatility is laid over the serene, almost classical composition in skeins of warm oil paint. Each successive layer is more violent, expressive and colorful. Richard Hofmann Solo Exhibition at Limbo Gallery (1984) by Richard Sarnoff
Richard Hofmann's work... is aligned to the scope of ...Neo-Expressionism ... in its savage distortion of color and form to reveal subjective truths. Hofmann's exclusive vehicle of expression is the human figure, often dwarfed, elongated ... to accommodate the dimensions of the canvas.
The spiritual attributes that these grotesques acquire in biblical works like Angel and Pietà are carried over to arcane autobiographical subjects... Two Brothers with Dog depicts the nude and partially clothed siblings drifting in a flood of discordant blue, orange and red. Echoing the apparent weightlessness of the bodies are the arms, up-raised in gestures of divine presentation. The anguished face of the figure on the right is embraced by a golden halo while his brother, separated by the hovering amorphic mass of the dog, appears to stare and hum in a trance... the emotional charge of Hofmann's painting stems not from the subject but from the fervidly scrawled brushstrokes and layers of intense color.
By outlining the brightest hues with somber tones (a favorite device of the German Expressionists), illusory depth is denied and color becomes the structural agent of the work. The First Time I Ever Touched the Flesh of Samir exhibits a decisive move away from an impastic use of paint in favor of a controlled use of color. The visage of the right figure in this work particularly recalls the mastery of pure color found in Jawlensky's early portrait studies...ARTS MAGAZINE (Dec 1984), by Ron Warren.
Hofmann's style is an explosive orgy of painterly expression...Hofmann's subject matter loses its tangible identity in the frenzy of its physical appearance, as baroque forms congeal out of a seething mass of wildly independent brushstrokes. COCA FOLIO (1985), review of NeoYork/Seattle show.
The work of thirtyish painter Richard Hofmann presents us with a dilemma: how far can Neo-Expressionism go without completely flipping back into the past, into the halcyon days (of a sort) of European Expressionism and its adherents?
The question arises out of Hofmann's gift: he is an almost spookily authoritative Expressionist in the classic mode of Kokoschka, skillfully steering his talent away from the kindergarten cut-ups of so many East Village painters into a world of his own and his forebearers. His Expressionism is truly grave, truly frightening. But the question nags: hasn't this been done before, if not better done before?
It would be hard to better Hofmann, however, who paints up what may be the meanest American Expressionist storm since the youthful days of de Kooning. Indeed, he outdoes de Kooning in his singular grasp of the subject matter really at hand in all Expressionism: the "Big questions" of life and death, heaven and hell, sin and exoneration, grace and judgement.
Capturing an Angel-- the title of a painting of a man in very color of he Expressionist rainbow with this arms around an "angel" of roiling tubes (or so it seems) -- could in truth serve as the title of the entire show...
Hofmann's is an immensely sophisticated vision, while at the same time a primitive one. Only a sophisticated naive could bring such credulous intensity to his subjects, such brooding passion.
A Doctor's Visit, though relatively pacific in its oranges and reds and pinks in the painting of the face, could still only spell doom to the hapless patient. Richard Hofmann at Steven Adams Gallery (1985) by Gerrit Henry