Sale: 540 / Evening Sale, June 09. 2023 in Munich Lot 22

 

22
Karl Hofer
Die Geschwister, 1927.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 100,000 / $ 108,000
Sold:
€ 127,000 / $ 137,160

(incl. surcharge)
Die Geschwister. 1927.
Oil on canvas.
Wohlert 748. Monogrammed in lower right. Stretcher with an old label with the inscription "Karl Hofer / Zwei Kinder / 3". 100 x 65 cm (39.3 x 25.5 in). [JS].

• High-quality figure portrait from his best creative period.
• "Die Geschwister" – intimately connected and yet aloof.
• Radical modern aesthetics: a clear-reduced composition in radiant colors.
• Early exhibition history: in 1928/29 shown at the acclaimed Hofer exhibitions at Kunsthalle Mannheim (1928) and the Kunsthaus Zürich (1929), as well as in exhibitions at the Berlin and the Badische Secession.
• Rediscovered: privately-owned for nearly 100 years.
• As early as in 1949, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired the similar painting "Jüngling mit Melone" (1926/1933)
.

PROVENANCE: Hermann Baumgarten, Stuttgart (1928).
Private collection Baden-Württemberg (presumably acquired from the above, family-owned for more than 90 years).

EXHIBITION: Zweite Ausstellung Badische Secession / Fünfte Ausstellung Stuttgarter Secession, Neues Ausstellungsgebäude im Schlossgarten, Stuttgart, April 28 - June 10, 1928, p. 9, cat. no. 68 (with illu., p. 25).
Karl Hofer. Das gesammelte Werk, Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim September 9 - October 21, 1928, p. 13, cat. no. 101.
Kollektivausstellung Karl Hofer, catalog for the 55th exhibition of the Berlin Secession, in cooperation with Galerie Flechtheim, Berlin, Nov./Dec. 1928, p. 17, cat. no. 62.
Karl Hofer, Kunsthaus Zürich, January 24 - February, 23, 1929, p. 11, cat. no. 48.

LITERATURE: K. Martin, Kunsthalle Mannheim: Karl Hofer, in: Kunst und Künstler, 27.1929, p. 76.

"I have never created a figuration based on the external nature of accidence. Impressionism did not touch me for this purpose. The ecstasies of Expressionism did not suit me, either. Man and the humane have always been at the heart of my art."

Karl Hofer, quoted from: Karl Hofer. Von Lebensspuk und stiller Schönheit, ex. cat. Kunsthalle Emden 2012, p. 14.

Karl Hofer is the master of the figure painting, a master of stillness and the contemplative gaze. His characters are motionless and lost in thought. In the 1920s, Hofer, who was appointed professor at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts in 1921, found his characteristic style, which would henceforth characterize his pictorial oeuvre. Although their historical background in the period between the wars was formative for the melancholy these works emanate, they are particularly fascinating for their timeless expressiveness.

The present painting "Die Geschwister” (The Siblings), which is characterized by radical modern aesthetics due to the reduced composition and the coloring, is a true rediscovery from Hofer's best creative period. In Karl Bernhard Wohlert's catalog raisonné from 2007, the work is still mentioned as "whereabouts unknown", however, Hofer's impressive creation had been hidden in a private collection in Württemberg for almost a century. The work has remained in the family for several generations and was originally acquired from the Stuttgart art dealer Hermann Baumgarten, probably around 1930. This is documented by an entry in the catalog of the Karl Hofer exhibition at the Berlin Secession in 1928, where the painting was on display a year after it was made, mentioning Baumgarten as the owner. In 1928, the work was not only exhibited at the Berlin Secession, but also at the Baden Secession, and was part of the important Hofer exhibitions at Kunsthalle Mannheim (1928) and the Kunsthaus Zurich (1929). The painting then remained hidden from the public for almost a hundred years, before it is now up for auction.

Intimate and yet aloof is how Hofer presents us the young man and his little sister wearing a bright red dress. Tightly embracing each other, they gaze in different directions and seem strangely unrelated. In this wonderful picture of brother and sister, Hofer depicts two children as introverted, melancholic figures. In his figure paintings, Hofer never depicts actions, only people gazing into the void. As our early high quality painting "Geschwister" shows, Hofer was not concerned with actual portraits of the sitters, but shows his figures as de-individualized representatives of the humane. This is exactly the reason for the special, timelessly modern character that makes Hofer's fascinating creations of the 1920s so special. During the Nazi era, Hofer's groundbreaking oeuvre was considered "degenerate" and Hofer was dismissed from his position at the academy in the summer of 1934. [JS]



22
Karl Hofer
Die Geschwister, 1927.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 100,000 / $ 108,000
Sold:
€ 127,000 / $ 137,160

(incl. surcharge)