29 Facts About Karl Hofer

Karl Christian Ludwig Hofer or Carl Hofer was a German expressionist painter.

Karl Hofer was director of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts.

Karl Hofer's work was among those considered degenerate art by the Nazis, but after World War II he regained recognition as one of the leading German painters.

At the age of 14 Karl Hofer began a bookshop apprenticeship, which he completed three years later.

In 1897 Hofer began studying painting at the Art Academy of Karlsruhe.

Karl Hofer's talent was recognized early, he received a scholarship from the fund of the Grand Duke of Baden.

Karl Hofer became a student of Thoma in 1901 and a year later a student of the painter Leopold von Kalckreuth at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart.

The couple had three sons, Karl Hofer Johannes Arnold, called Carlino, born in 1904, Titus Wolfgang, born in 1905, who died in 1906, and Hans-Rudi, born in 1911.

In 1902 Karl Hofer concluded a five-year contract with the Swiss entrepreneur and patron Theodor Reinhart, in which it was agreed a regular support.

From 1908 to 1913 the Karl Hofer family lived in Paris, and in 1913 they moved to Berlin.

Since 1905, Karl Hofer's paintings had been regularly shown at exhibitions.

Karl Hofer was dismissed by the mediation of Reinhart in 1917, and moved to Switzerland, first to Churwalden, then to Zurich.

In recognition for his services as an artist and as a professor, Karl Hofer was admitted to the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1923.

Between the art movements of the twenties, Karl Hofer represented his own style, which was later referred to as "Magic Realism".

At the beginning of the twenties, Karl Hofer had a relationship with Elisabeth Schmidt, whom he had met as a model.

Karl Hofer had been opposed to Nazism even before they reached power.

Karl Hofer was then on a leave and was dismissed from teaching in the summer of 1934.

At the beginning of Nazi Germany, Karl Hofer still tried to conciliate his art with the new regimen ideology to a certain extent.

Karl Hofer was represented with eight works in the Nazi propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art" held in Munich, in 1937.

Karl Hofer was expelled from the Reich Chamber of the Fine Arts in October 1938, since the confirmation of the divorce came too late at the Ministry of Propaganda.

Karl Hofer was then no longer allowed to sell his works publicly in the art trade or at auctions; the exclusion was therefore considered a professional ban.

In November 1938, Karl Hofer married for a second time to Elisabeth Schmidt, considered an "aryan" according to Nazi standards.

Karl Hofer regained his artistic prestige in the post-war Germany.

Karl Hofer received an honorary doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1948.

Karl Hofer was awarded the Order Pour le merite for Science and Arts in 1952, and the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1953.

Karl Hofer published two autobiographical books, Aus Leben und Kunst, in 1952, and "Erinnerungen eines Malers", in 1953.

Karl Hofer was involved in a public dispute with the art critic Will Grohmann on figuration and abstraction.

Karl Hofer planned to publish the treatise Uber das Gesetzliche in der bildenden Kunst, on the controversy, because in the same year, at the climax of the dispute, he suffered a stroke, from which he succumbed later.

Karl Hofer died in Berlin on 3 April 1955, aged 76 years old.