Seth Hoffman

Samuel S. Hoffman (September 8, 1895 – August 2, 1948) was a twentieth-century American artist, most noted for his black & white monotypes.

A native of Philadelphia, Hoffman studied at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1914-1920) with Philip Hale, Emil Carlsen, Daniel Garber, Charles Grafly, and Henry McCarter, and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Hoffman moved to New York, where he became a member of the Woodstock Artists Association and taught art at the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Locals 22 and 91, in New York City.

By profession painter, etcher, and teacher, his work was exhibited at Pepsi-Cola, 1945; National Academy of Design, 1940; solo shows: Macbeth (Feb. & Nov. 1930, Feb. 1932), Grand Central (1935), Milch Galleries, NY; Casson Gallery, Boston; O'Brien Gallery, Chicago; Tilden & Thurber Gallery, Providence; Milwaukee Art Institute; Detroit Institute of Arts; Grand Rapids Art Gallery; Westchester Center, White Plains, NY. As a WPA artist, Hoffman was commissioned to create a series of monotypes set in Westchester for the county's offices and libraries, which he completed in 1934.

Hoffman's monotypes can be found in the permanent collections of Addison Gallery of American Art[10] at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA; Springville Museum of Art,[11] Springville City, UT; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art[12] at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum,[13] Washington, D.C.; and National Gallery of Art[14] Washington, D.C.; as well as in the currently touring Sigmund R. Balka Collection[15] of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, New York, NY. Two oil paintings are in the Nazario Renzoni & Vilma Valencia collection in Florence, Italy.[16][17]

Hoffman was born on the 8th of September in 1895 in Philadelphia. He was married in Philadelphia in 1920 to Molly Gaylburd, known also as Marie "Molly" Gilbert, and they had one son, Henry G. Hoffman, born in Philadelphia in 1927. In New York, Hoffman lived in Lake Mohegan, Westchester (1935); Peekskill, Westchester (1940); and New York City.[18][19][20] He died after a long illness on the 2nd of August in 1948 in Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, at the age of 52.[21]