Charles Hinman (born 1932 in Syracuse, New York) is an abstract minimalist painter, notable for creating three-dimensional shaped canvas paintings in the mid-1960s.
[3] In the early 1960s, Hinman lived on Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan, where he shared an abandoned sail-making loft with James Rosenquist.
[5] Along with Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman and Agnes Martin, who resided in the neighboring buildings, they formed a small artistic community away from the Upper-East side and the abstract expressionists from whom they wished to differentiate themselves.
[7] In 1965, Hinman and Robert Indiana left Coenties Slip for the Bowery, where they shared a building at 2 Spring Street.
While Sven Lukin and Richard Smith were also experimenting with the use of the three-dimensional canvas around the same time,[11] Hinman's defining particularity was his focus on the illusion of space[3] and subtly suggested volume, embracing the use of color, shadow and reflection.
He was influenced by Ellsworth Kelly in his flat and contrasting Hard-edge use of color but with the objective of generating and accentuating a perception of volume.
[13] It was through James Rosenquist, that Hinman caught the attention of prominent New York gallery owners and museum directors who visited the studio they shared.
[14] In 1965, Frank Stella and Henry Geldzahler included Hinman's work in their group show Shape and Structure at Tibor de Nagy, alongside Donald Judd, Larry Bell, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre and Will Insley.
Further, the choice of adjacent colors causes a sensation of motion of the surfaces"[19] Throughout his career, Hinman has continuously created works in series.
[11] This initial selection has been questioned and broadened over the years by several retrospective group shows that hosted a wider variety of shaped canvases.
Frank Stella's 1965 group show Shape and Structure immediately refuted Olloway's position by including Hinman's paintings.
Hinman's work was presented alongside that of Kenneth Noland, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Mangold, Bernard Venet and Tom Wesselmann.
[22] In 2014, Hinman was included in the group show "Shaped Canvas Revisited" at the Luxembourg and Dayan Gallery in New York.
This exhibition, which celebrated the fifty years of the original Guggenheim show, places Hinman among the fathers of the shaped canvas movement alongside artists such as Lucio Fontana, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella and Tom Wesselmann.