Karl Hofer

The German painter and later director of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, Karl Hofer, was born in Karlsruhe in 1878. In 1897, Hofer first studied painting at the Karlsruhe Art Academy and from 1901 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. After stays in Rome, Paris and Berlin, Hofer took part in the "Berlin Secession" exhibition in 1908 and became a member of the new "Freie Secession" in 1913 together with Max Liebermann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

During the 1920s, Hofer took up a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg and developed a style of painting that can be categorized as "Magical Realism". A new representational painting with surrealist echoes, which oscillates between reality and dream, becomes Hofer's distinguishing feature.

During the National Socialist era, Hofer's work was degraded as "degenerate" and presented at the Nazi propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art" in Munich; he was also banned from teaching. Hofer's studio was bombed and many of his works destroyed.

From 1945, Hofer worked as director of the Academy of Fine Arts, which he played a key role in establishing after the war. Hofer dies in Berlin in 1955.