Mann und Frau. 1948.
Oil on canvas.
Monogrammed and dated in upper right. 90 x 70 cm (35.4 x 27.5 in).


• Karl Hofer creates distinct modern aesthetics through a reduced composition and the use of flat colors.
• With an intimate aesthetic characterized by distance and a sense of strangeness, he was a visionary chronicler of his time.
• Karl Hofer's figure paintings were exhibited alongside Dix, Grosz and Beckmann in the legendary exhibition "German Art of the 20th Century" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1957.

PROVENANCE: Hofer Estate, no. 106
Wirnitzer list 159
Private collection Karlsruhe.
Private collection Southern Germany (through Galerie W.Ketterer in 1991, ever since family-owned).

EXHIBITION: Karl Hofer, Magistrat von Groß-Berlin, Galerie des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1948.
Karl Hofer Städtische Galerie Schloss Oberhausen 1962, cat. 11
Karl Hofer, Baukunst Galerie Köln, Cologne 1978, no. 85
Karl Hofer, Baukunst Galerie Köln, Cologne 1982, no. 39 (here erroneously 80 x 70 cm).
Karl Hofer, Baukunst Galerie Köln, Cologne 1984, no. 20 (here erroneously 80 x 70 cm).

LITERATURE: Karl Bernhard Wohlert (ed.), Markus Eisenbeis (ed.), Karl Hofer. Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, vol. 3, Cologne 2007, no. 2143 (B)
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Carl Hofer, Das Selbstverständliche und das Artistische in der Kunst. Ein Beitrag zum Ismenkampf und zum eigenen Werk, in: Thema. Zeitschrift für die Einheit der Kultur, issue 1.1949/50, issue 1, p. 36 (illu.)
Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Moderne Kunst, 161st auction, Munich May 27, 1991, lot 51 (illu. in color on p. 75 and on the title).

"I have nothing more to say about my work and myself, I always thought that's the pictures' job."
Karl Hofer in: Thema, vol. 1, p.32.