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Karl Hofer

1878–1955 · German · Expressionnisme

REDISCOVERY CANDIDATE
—Auction record
1Realized lots on file

Biography

Karl Christian Ludwig Hofer was born on 11 October 1878 in Karlsruhe, the son of a military musician. He received his early training at the Grand Ducal Baden Art Academy under Hans Thoma before pursuing further study and work in Paris. From 1921 to 1934 he held a teaching position at the Berlin Art Academy, a tenure that placed him at the centre of Weimar-era artistic life. He died in Berlin on 3 April 1955.

Hofer's mature painting is defined by a severe, psychologically charged figuration that sets it apart from both the decorative currents of his early years and the more agitated strains of German Expressionism. Works such as The Black Table (1928) and Self-Portrait with Model (c. 1927–1928) demonstrate his characteristic compression of space and his capacity to invest still, monumental figures with an atmosphere of existential unease. Resting Figures (1931) and The Three Men (1932) extend this language into images of collective anxiety that read as oblique registers of the political pressures gathering around him. The Red House (1934) belongs to the period when the National Socialist regime targeted his work, and Melancholy (1943) — produced during the war years — distils the inwardness and trauma of that era into a concentrated late style. His inclusion in the 1937 Entartete 'Kunst' exhibition in Munich, which toured to Berlin, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Vienna, Frankfurt, and other cities, marked the official condemnation of his practice; American and European institutions nonetheless continued to exhibit his work, including group presentations at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1931 and 1934, and repeated appearances in the Carnegie International exhibitions in Pittsburgh across the 1920s and 1930s.

After the war, Hofer's standing was formally recognised through a series of honours: an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University of Berlin in 1948, honorary membership of the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe in the same year, election as President of the Deutscher Künstlerbund in 1950, and both the Kunstpreis der Stadt Berlin and the Großes Verdienstkreuz of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1953. His work entered the permanent collections of major German institutions, among them the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung in Munich, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, alongside dozens of further regional and municipal museums across Germany. A major touring retrospective, Karl Hofer – Zwischen Schönheit und Wahrheit, opened at the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg in Halle in 2025 and is scheduled to continue at Schloss Achberg and the Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen in 2026, reflecting sustained institutional commitment to his legacy as the 150th anniversary of his birth approaches in 2028.

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Related artists

Ernst Ludwig KirchnerHermann Max PechsteinEgon SchieleEmil NoldeAlexej von JawlenskyChaïm Soutine

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