Puerto Rican Folk Song
Object NamePrint
Artist / Maker
Irwin Hoffman
(American, 1901 - 1989)
Date1933-1944
MediumEtching & drypoint
Dimensions7 3/4 x 10 3/4 in. (19.7 x 27.3 cm)
ClassificationsPrints and Printing Plates
Credit LineTransferred from the Applied Art Department, Iowa State University. In the permanent collection, Brunnier Art Museum, University Museusms, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
Object numberUM82.96
Status
Not on viewCollections
CultureAmerican
EditionEdition of 250
Label TextAn assembled group of people dances to music. Many immigrants continue to practice rituals, ceremonies, and other traditions after moving to the United States. These nationalistic ties often allowed sects of immigrants within larger cities to bond. The kaleidoscope of activity found in America reflects the vibrancy created by the colorful quilting of many heritages to create one cohesive, interdependent nation.
Irwin Hoffman was born in 1901 in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Boston's Museum School of Fine Arts. While still in his teens, he was awarded the Page3 Traveling Scholarship and completed his studies abroad in France, Italy, Russia, and Holland. Upon returning to America, Hoffman first gained national recognition for his etchings of miners, factory laborers, and other men at work.
During the 1930s, Irwin Hoffman devoted much of his artistic talents to the portrayal of life in Latin America. He first spent much time in Mexico where he studied the murals and graphic art of Diego Rivera and Jose Elemente Orozco. Later in the decade he concentrated upon studies of the peasant life in Puerto Rico. This original etching dates from this time.
Whether portraying working life and labor in the United States or the arduous existence of life in Latin America, one is always struck with both the sympathy and veracity of Hoffman's original etchings. Unlike many "social" artists of the period, Hoffman actually lived and worked with the peoples he portrayed.
In the years of 1938 and 1939, Hoffman was commissioned at least three times to contribute original etchings to the Associated American Artists in New York. The AAA was created in the mid 1930s and was responsible for commissioning original graphic art from such leading American masters as Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh, and Irwin Hoffman. Puerto Rican Folk Song was published by the AAA in 1938 in a limited, signed edition of 250 impressions.
PeriodDepression Era
Published ReferencesAAA Cat.: 1944‑05
SignedSigned in pencil, lower right, "Irwin D. Hoffman", signed and dated in plate, lower right, "Irwin D. Hoffman".
Locations
- (not entered) Iowa State University, Brunnier Main Storage
