Exhi­bi­tion at Schloss Achberg

Karl Hofer

Between Beau­ty and Truth

April 11, 2026, to Octo­ber 18, 2026

Schloss Achberg presents a com­pre­hen­sive exhi­bi­tion of the work of Karl Hofer (1878–1955), one of the most impor­tant and inde­pen­dent artists of clas­si­cal mod­ernism in Ger­many. Over 60 key paint­ings, pri­mar­i­ly from the Art­house Col­lec­tion, paint a vivid por­trait of an artist whose work rais­es press­ing ques­tions about human­i­ty and exis­tence.

Human exis­tence forms the core of Hofer­’s oeu­vre. His fig­ures in motifs such as grace­ful por­traits of girls, bathers, or din­ner par­ties con­vey exis­ten­tial, often melan­cholic feel­ings. In doing so, he sub­tly processed the hor­rors of the world wars and cre­at­ed a ten­sion between time­less beau­ty and vision­ary warn­ing images. A great lon­er, he devel­oped an unmis­tak­able visu­al lan­guage with clear­ly con­toured lines and dry col­ors.
Defamed as “degen­er­ate” by the Nation­al Social­ists, Hofer had a deci­sive influ­ence on the West Ger­man art debate after 1945 as direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts in Berlin, defend­ing fig­u­ra­tive paint­ing against the grow­ing dom­i­nance of abstrac­tion.
The exhi­bi­tion con­tex­tu­al­izes his work through paint­ings by artists of the Halle School and Willi Baumeis­ter, thus illu­mi­nat­ing the recep­tion of his work in East and West Ger­many.
Curat­ed by Michael C. Mau­r­er and Marie-Theres Pech­er, the exhi­bi­tion is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Schloss Achberg, the Art­house Col­lec­tion, the Kun­st­mu­se­um Moritzburg Halle (Saale), the Städtis­che Galerie Bietigheim-Bissin­gen, and the Kun­sthalle Ros­tock. A com­pre­hen­sive cat­a­log has been pub­lished by E.A. See­mann Ver­lag.