Jelena Dorotka Hoffman (1876-1965) - Rediscovering a forgotten Female Cubist Painter

Abstract

U radu se prvi put iznosi biografi ja slikarice Jelene Dorotke Hoffmann koja je od 1907. do 1914. godine živjela u Parizu i imala vlastiti atelje na Montparnassu. Ondje je upoznala mnoge vodeće ličnosti svjetskog slikarstva (Matisse, Chagall, Picasso, Van Dongen, Léger, Laurencin), a radila je neko vrijeme i u Matisseovoj slikarskoj školi. U Parizu je prijateljevala s Marie Vassilieff, osnivačicom poznate pariške Académie Russe (Académie Vassilieff), a upoznala je i Ivana Meštrovića. Po izbijanju Prvog svjetskog rata napustila je Francusku i nakon višegodišnjih lutanja po Europi vratila se 1922. godine u rodni Dubrovnik u kojemu je u potpunoj anonimnosti živjela sve do smrti.The Paris phase of Jelena Dorotka Hoffman represents, along with Vinko Foretić who was in Paris at the same time and whom Hoffman probably knew, one of the fi rst contact of Croatian art with cubism. She was born into a noble family of Dubrovnik in 1876, and she left for Paris in 1907 to devote herself to art. As she was a person of means, she had her own apartment and atelier on Montparnasse, a place where new world art was being made. She studied in the painting school of Henri Matisse, and she was a friend of Marie Vassilieff, the founder of the famous Accadémie Russe (Accadémie Vassilieff). There she met many a giant of modern art, the young talented artists growing in stature, who frequented the cantine of Marie Vassilieff (Erik Satie, Henri Matisse, Nina Hamnett, Amedeo Modigliani, Ossip Zadkin, Juan Gris, Chaim Soutine). Among Croatian artists she maintained ties with Ivan Meštrović. At the beginning of the First World War and as a member of an enemy power, she had to leave Paris in the fall of 1914. She went to Spain where she stayed for several years. There she met and developed friendship with the well-known French female painter and print maker Marie Laurencin, who herself had to leave Paris. After years of wandering, Jelena Dorotka Hoffman returned to Dubrovnik in 1922, to stay there in total anonymity until her death in 1965. Her undoubtedly interesting opus has been only partially preserved, and this is the fi rst attempt to publish a small portion of it, along with a reconstruction of her life history, following the steps of the forgotten cubist female painter from Dubrovnik to Paris and back