HOFER, KARL
1878 Karlsruhe–1955 Berlin

Title: Junge unter Blättern sitzend (Indien).
Date: Ca. 1911.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 56 x 59.5 cm.
Notation: Monogrammed lower right: CH (ligated).
Frame: Craftsman's frame.



Provenance:
- - Galerie H.O. Miethke, Vienna

- Baron Adolf Kohner collection, Budapest (presumably until 1934)

- Dr. Carl O. von Grossinger collection, Vienna

- E. Hauswedell, Hamburg, 187th auction, 1972, lot 812 (here titled: Seated Youth)

- Private collection North Germany


Literature:
- Wohlert, Karl Bernhard: Karl Hofer - Catalogue raisonné of paintings, vol. 2, VAN HAM Art

Publications, Cologne 2007, cat. rais. no. 195, ill.

- Art Prize Jb. , 27.1971/72, p. 416

- Annuaire international des ventes, 11.1973, p. 592

- Feist, Ursula and Günter (ed.): Karl Hofer/Theodor Reinhart: Painter and Patron. A

Correspondence in selection, Berlin 1989, p. 308



- The artist’s works are held in major collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum Folkwang in Essen, and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne

- A rare early work from the period of his trip to India around 1911

- Lively brushstrokes and a lyrical, melancholic expression



Karl Hofer occupies a unique position within Classical Modernism. His work cannot be clearly classified as either Expressionism or New Objectivity. His painting is characterised by clearly structured compositions, a nuanced use of colour, and a lyrical, melancholic expression. After studying under Hans Thoma and Leopold von Kalckreuth in Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, Hofer spent the period from 1903 to 1908 in Rome. His first exhibitions followed in Weimar and at the ‘Neue Künstlervereinigung München’. He subsequently lived in Paris before a journey to India took him there around 1911. During the First World War, Hofer was interned as a civilian in France and later lived in Switzerland. In the 1920s, he was one of the leading artists of the Weimar Republic and became a professor at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. Ostracised by the Nazi regime as a ‘degenerate artist’ and banned from working and exhibiting, Hofer was rehabilitated after 1945 and, as director of the Academy of Fine Arts and president of the German Artists’ Association, shaped cultural life in the post-war period.

The painting on offer is connected to Hofer’s trip to India around 1911. It depicts a young boy sitting in the shade of dense, swaying foliage. The figure appears introverted; his downcast gaze and calm demeanour lend him a quiet, contemplative air. Broad, lively brushstrokes shape the surrounding vegetation and create a dense atmosphere. The colour scheme, comprising deep greens, yellows and warm reds, shapes the figure and lends the scene a warm, almost shimmering intensity. Within his oeuvre, the painting marks an early phase in which travel experiences and direct observation of nature merge into a vivid yet timeless conception of the figure – a theme that Hofer would revisit time and again in the decades that followed.



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