Karl Hofer - Stehender Mädchenakt vor Rot (Nude Girl Standing before Red), 1954

Oil on canvas

100 x 70 cm / framed 136 x 107 cm
39 x 27 inch / framed 53 x 42 inch

monogrammed bottom right, dated: “CH 54”

– with handmade craftsman's frame –

N 8892

Provenance:

Nachlass des Künstlers
Baukunst Galerie Köln
Privatbesitz

Literature:

Villa Grisebach, Berlin, Auktionen Nr. 101, Los Nr. 311 mit farbiger Abb.

Catalogue raisonné:

K.B. Wohlert, Karl Hofer, Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, Band 3, No. 2719 with illustration on page 152

Exhibitions:

München, Galerie Baumgartl, 2001, Katalog mit farbiger Abb. S. 74/75
München, Galerie Baumgartl, 2001, Karl Hofer, Wiedergewonnene Verluste, Bilder aus den letzten Jahren, Nr. 41 G mit farbiger Abb.
Essen, Galerie Neher, Frühjahr 2012, Katalog mit farbiger Abb. S. 17
Essen, Galerie Neher, Winter 2013/14, Kunst aus dem 20. Jahrhundert, Katalog mit farbiger Abb. S. 23
Essen, Galerie Neher, Frühjahr 2020, Kunst aus dem 20. Jahrhundert, Katalog mit farbiger Abb. S. 13
Essen, Galerie Neher, Herbst–Winter 2022/23, Katalog mit farbiger Abb. S. 33

About the work

The work Stehender Mädchenakt vor Rot (Nude Girl Standing Before Red) was painted by the German artist Karl Hofer in his final creative phase, one year before dying of a stroke in 1955. Throughout his life Hofer was committed to figuration – in contrast to the strongly propagated abstract art of the time. Hofer even maintained this stance in his painting – and particularly his passion for human representation – at the so–called Darmstädter Gespräche (Darmstadt Colloquy) in 1950, and also during the polemical public debates waged between Hofer himself and the art critic Will Grohmann in 1955. At the time, Hofer was planning to publish the paper "On Legality in the Fine Arts" as a programmatic manifesto modelled on Wassily Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art from 1902 (2. edition 1952). An extract from the essay was not published by Kurt Martin until after Hofer's death, which also marked an abrupt end to this controversial debate between the proponents of the various currents in art.

Just as Hofer's work constantly maintains a classical balance and a rigorous and lucid compositional structure, this nude from 1954 is distinguished by its lyrical and melancholic mood. Against a violet background with a red aureole intensified by elements of green, Hofer succeeds in conjuring an almost clerical pictorial motif. Stripped of any voyeuristic components, the purity and beauty of the nude stand to the fore in this composition.

Whereas as Hofer's early oeuvre bore strong echoes of the classicism of Arnold Böcklin, Anselm Feuerbach and even Hans von Marèes, during the course of time his work – strongly influenced by his numerous encounters with, among others, the works of Paul Cèzanne – focused increasingly on the quintessence. Following Hofer's experience with the NS terror, which resulted not only in him being dismissed from his post of professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin, but also in the destruction of his early and middle–period works during an allied air raid on March 1, 1943, his later work was characterised by an almost majestic primitivism of linear austerity and intensity. This painting Stehender Mädchenakt vor Rot (Nude Girl Standing Before Red) represents an eloquent example of this final and highly focused phase of his creative output.

Text authored and provided by Dr Andrea Fink, art historian

The art historian, curator and freelance publicist Andrea Fink studied art history, cultural studies and humanities, modern history and philosophy in Bochum and Vienna. Doctorate in 2007 on the work of the Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. As a freelance curator and art consultant, her clients include, among others, the Kunstverein (art association) Ahlen, Kunstverein Soest, Wella Museum, Museum am Ostwall Dortmund, ThyssenKrupp AG, Kulturstiftung Ruhr, Osthaus Museum Hagen, Franz Haniel GmbH, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria.

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Karl Hofer, Nude Girl Standing before Red, 1954, 100 x 70 cm / framed 136 x 107 cm, N 8892
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