The Berlin Secession and Degenerate Art: Karl Hofer
Girl with Braid (Mädchen mit Zopf, c. 1925) – Karl Hofer
Oil on canvas
92.8 × 70 cm (36.5 × 27.5 in)
Auctioned at Ketterer Kunst in 2024 for €150,000

Karl Hofer (1878–1955) was one of the most influential voices in German art during the first half of the 20th century. Though often linked to Expressionism, he carved out a path of his own—never formally joining groups like Die Brücke or Der Blaue Reiter, yet clearly absorbing their emotional intensity and bold use of color.

His paintings often center on solitary figures, especially women, caught in moments of quiet reflection. There’s a sculptural stillness to them, a kind of emotional pause. Rather than telling a story, Hofer’s work invites you to feel your way through it—his subjects seem to carry something unspoken, something inward.

Girl with Braid (Mädchen mit Zopf) is a beautiful example of this. Painted around 1925, it reflects the calm clarity and formal balance that aligned Hofer with the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement. That same year, his work was featured in the groundbreaking Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, marking a high point in his career.

But that momentum was brutally interrupted. In 1933, Hofer was dismissed from his teaching post at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. Just four years later, more than 300 of his works were seized from public collections and labeled Entartete Kunst—“Degenerate Art”—by the Nazi regime. Nine of those pieces were displayed in the infamous Munich exhibition designed to mock modernist artists. Then, in 1943, an Allied bombing raid destroyed his Berlin studio and much of his remaining work.

Still, Hofer returned to painting after the war, and his resilience became part of his legacy. His art continued to speak quietly but powerfully about human dignity, even in the face of devastation.

There’s also a deeper philosophical current running through his work. Hofer believed in the human spirit—its fragility, its strength, its solitude. In the wake of World War I and the uncertainty of the Weimar years, his figures seem to embody a kind of moral stillness, a search for meaning in a fractured world. Girl with Braid, with its gentle introspection and timeless presence, is more than a portrait—it’s a meditation on inner resilience.