MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

Karl Hofer (11 October 1878 – 3 April 1955) was a German expressionist painter, and former Director of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. His practice as an artist was distinguished by the belief that there was no meaningful distinction to be made between abstract and figurative painting, and that the two were entirely compatible with each other. Hofer stood against Nazism, and even published articles, such as "Wie kämpfen wir gegen ein Drittes Reich?" ("How do we fight against a Third Reich?"), published in the communist newspaper Welt am Abend. Despite rejecting Nazism, Hofer looked to find ways for art to find acceptance by the regime. He, for example, also wrote the article "Der Kampf um die Kunst" ("The Struggle for Art") in a series of articles on German art in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, arguing that German art was largely "free of Jews", like no other area of society other than the military. Ultimately though, his work was deemed as ‘degenerate art’ by the Nazis, who presented eight of his paintings in the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition.