Young woman with headscarf

Details

With a photo expertise from the Karl Hofer Committee, Cologne, dated 19 October 2022 (copy). The work will be included in the Karl Hofer catalogue raisonné and listed in the Karl Hofer Archive under the number N30.

Provenance:

Private collection, Berlin;

Private property, Northern Germany.

Description

– Typical Hofer portrait with a delicate, contemplative character

– Reduced pictorial means emphasise the concentrated expressiveness

– Hofer also succeeds in depicting timeless universality in individual portraits

Karl Hofer, who remained a vehement advocate of figurative art throughout his life, developed his own pictorial repertoire early on, which he continued to develop and perfect over the decades. In addition to landscapes and still lifes, it is above all his depictions of people that make his oeuvre unmistakable. Groups by the sea, artists, lovers and, time and again, figures of girls, sometimes standing at the window, sometimes sitting, in groups or individually. Hofer’s painting strives for clear, simple beauty and is characterised by a very balanced and characteristic pictorial language with highly simplified forms and clearly contoured areas of colour. The small-format portraits in particular demonstrate Hofer’s outstanding talent. His main focus is not on the striking external features of his sitters, which tend to disappear behind his two-dimensional painting style, but rather on the inner tensions, which he is able to express masterfully. Using seemingly simple painterly means inspired by Cézanne – a closed composition with a reduced colour palette, a summary treatment of the clothing and an undefined background without accessories – Hofer condenses the expressive power of the motif to its essentials. The inward gaze with disproportionately large eyes, which creates the contemplative reverie so characteristic of Hofer’s portraits, is particularly striking. At first glance, the models may appear to resemble each other, but on closer inspection it becomes clear that Hofer has succeeded ingeniously in combining a certain universality with the individuality of those portrayed.