1. An apparatus for hand gesture recognition, comprising: a processor configured to acquire a depth image comprising a region of a hand performing a gesture, classify depth points of the region in the depth image according to a corresponding hand portion, match a three-dimensional hand model with the classified depth points, by using distances between the classified depth points and the corresponding hand portion, and by minimizing a sum of distances between a plurality of depth points and the three-dimensional hand model, and track the gesture in an animation including the matched three-dimensional hand model.