Art: Mine Painter

Irwin Hoffman's brothers are mining engineers. Irwin Hoffman himself is a solid, soft-voiced artist who goes down a mine shaft almost as often as they do. Once there, he sits cramped in a lantern-lighted hole full of the din of drilling, sketches everything he sees. Mining engineers admire his sombre, accurate pictures, in 1936 invited him to join the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. Last week laymen too had their chance to admire, for Artist Hoffman's first show since 1935 opened in Manhattan at the Associated American Artists' Galleries. One admirer: Mining Engineer Herbert Hoover.

Born in Boston in 1901, Painter Hoffman began drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil. He studied art in Boston and Europe, now lives in a crowded Manhattan studio with a squint-eye view of Central Park. For recreation, he plays squash, second fiddle in an amateur chamber-music ensemble that meets in his studio every Wednesday evening.

When Artist Hoffman dislikes one of his pictures, he paints another over it. Failures lurk behind most of his canvases. Thus hidden is the painting that first brought him fame—Rubbish, which showed a derelict sitting next to an ashcan. "When I do a bad thing," he says, "I want to be the first one to know about it and the first one to destroy it. I can paint, I know I can paint."