Grey Diptych

The artist was born on October 4, 1945, in Portage, Wisconsin.  At 12, while attending a Catholic seminary, he experienced his first art exhibition: paintings by Franz Kline.  In them he saw the same introspection and isolation he had come to know through religion.  The painting Hoppe was doing in the 70s was a geometric abstraction of cool and subtle application.  Removed from the notion of “color field” application by the gridded rendering, the painting remains a single flat unit.