LAMAMIMET

Charles Hinman was born on December 29, 1932, in Syracuse, New York. He earned a BFA from Syracuse University in 1955 and briefly played minor‑league baseball before serving two years in the U.S. Army. After his service he worked as a mechanical drawing teacher and carpentry instructor before moving to New York City to study at the Art Students League.

In the early 1960s Hinman settled on Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan, where he shared a loft with James Rosenquist and became part of a loose circle that included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman and Agnes Martin. There he began experimenting with shaped canvases that projected outward from the wall, creating three‑dimensional painted objects that prefigured aspects of minimal and pop art. His work was shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the decade and entered the collections of major museums.

Hinman continued to paint and exhibit for the rest of his life, maintaining a studio on the Bowery and later in Long Island City. He died on May 29, 2026, at the age of 93. His pioneering shaped‑canvas paintings remain influential in discussions of postwar American abstraction.