Adam Konstanty Hoffmann

Adam Konstanty Hoffmann was born in 1918 in Kraków and died there on 3 March 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 education during the occupation at the Kunstgewerbeschule, and in the years 1945-48 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, in the painting studios of Władysław Jarocki and Eugeniusz Eibisch and the graphic studio of Konrad Srzednicki. He defended his diploma in 1948. He was a teacher at art high schools in Katowice and Kraków, and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. A draftsman, painter, he also dealt with posters. He created his own, individual world. The main theme of his art was the relationship between a woman and a man, which he presented grotesquely, caricaturally and sarcastically. He evoked biblical (Salome), mythological (The Rape of Europa) and Shakespearean motifs. Looking at the artist's drawings, at first we see a world that seems ugly, but as we discover his works, we see the wisdom and sense of humor of the author. Adam Hoffmann participated in all the major collective exhibitions in Poland, such as the exhibition of young visual artists at the Arsenal in Warsaw in 1955; and he had several dozen individual exhibitions - among others in Warsaw at Kordegarda (1966), at Zachęta (1972), and also at the Palace of Arts in Kraków (1973). In 2003, the National Museum in Kraków organized a retrospective exhibition of the artist's works entitled "Adam Hoffmann. Draftsman".