Karl Hofer - Mädchen sich kämmend

Karl Hofer

Mädchen sich kämmend
1943

Oil on canvas. 97.8 x 68.7 cm. Framed. Monogrammed and dated 'CH 43' (joined) in red lower right. - In very good condition. Slightly rubbed on hair and along margins.

“I feel an unbridled creative energy within me; I have never worked so much and so well. If this weren’t the case, I would have had to put an end to my life […]” (cited in: Karl Hofer, exh. cat. Kunsthalle Emden 2012, p. 128). This is how Karl Hofer described his state in the mid-1930s. Around a year before that, he had not only been dismissed from his professorship at the Akademie der Künste and reviled as a “dangerous grandee of the system”, his works had also been shown at the defamatory exhibition “Degenerate Art”. The sensitive Hofer was only able to survive the Nazi period with the help of his painting. As Henrike Holsing writes, it was “an outlet for his loathing, in which he could admonishingly take sides and which enabled him to flee reality and seek out the tranquil and harmonious realms he longed for” (ibid., p. 128).
He also created several of his best works during this period. These include the “Mädchen sich kämmend” which he completed in 1943. The young woman in a blue slip with narrow shoulder straps is calmly combing her strawberry-blonde hair. She is standing in front of a dark-brown background that cuts off our view into the scene and directs all our attention to the depiction of the woman. Like most of Hofer’s images of women from this period, she looks past the viewer; Hofer interprets her as contemplative and withdrawn. “My figures maintain complete calmness”, he writes, “no viewers exist for them, so they don’t look at them either” (cited in: Karl Hofer, exh. cat. Ascona 2024, p. 35). “Mädchen sich kämmend” provides an excellent example of these ideas and also appears in a realm removed from any element of individuality or historical specificity, in the midst of a dreamy gesture.

Catalogue Raisonné

Wohlert 1667

Provenance

Artist's estate; Private collection, Berlin; Dr. August (1871-1953) and Hilde Ochsenbein, Schaffhausen; Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Auction 37, May 1962, lot 169; Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, Auction 214, 2-4 June 1976, lot 636; Private ownership; Galerie Orangerie Reinz, Cologne (1979); Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia

Literature

Weltkunst, 50 (1980), no. 7, p. 856

Exhibitions

Berlin 1946 (Ausstellungsräume des Westens), Carl Hofer. Ausstellung von neuen Werken, cat. no. 31 (?); Cologne 1979 (Galerie Orangerie Reinz), 20 Jahre Galerie Orangerie Köln 1959-1979, no. 962 (as "Mädchen"), with colour illus.