Candida Höfer

1944 Eberswalde
- lebt und arbeitet in Köln

Candida Höfer, together with Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Axel Hütte and others, belonged to a generation of young artists who were all trained by Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. They are the avant-garde of photography in Germany. Höfer began studying film under Ole John in 1973 and, from 1976 to 1982, also photography under the Bechers. Her photographic series, with the phenomenological character of scientific studies, were exhibited at numerous one-man exhibitions in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and America (in New York and other places) from as early as the mid 1970s. Her breakthrough to fame came with a series of photographs showing guest workers in Germany, after which she concentrated on the subjects "Interiors", "Rooms" and "Zoological Gardens". In her photography Höfer turns towards architectural situations, which presumably influence, and are influenced by the public. The artist's preferred subject is interiors, but she avoids purely private rooms. The viewer becomes aware of the public character and the functionality of waiting rooms, libraries and museums, even though, or perhaps because there are no people (with few exceptions). Candida Höfer's works have been included in numerous important exhibitions in Germany and abroad, such as an exhibition at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf in 1991, where her works were shown together with works by her teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher and her former student colleagues. She also had works in the 1993 exhibition "Photographie der deutschen Gegenwartskunst" at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Exhibitions abroad, too, include works by Höfer, such as, among others, an exhibition at the Newport Harbor Art Museum in 1991, the Museum of contemporary Art in Sydney in 1992 and the St. Louis Art Museum (USA) as well as the Sonnabend Gallery in New York in 1997. Her latest series of interiors was shown in one-man exhibitions at the Kunstverein Wolfsburg, the Kunstverein Recklinghausen as well as the Kunstverein Oldenburg in 1998 and 1999.

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