K. H. Hödicke

* 1938 in Nürnberg, Germany † 2024 in Berlin, Germany

K. H. Hödicke was a representative of New Figuration and is regarded as a pioneer of German Neo-Expressionism. In 1945 he fled with his family to Wien and moved to Berlin in 1975, where, after a semester of architecture at the Technische Hochschule für Architektur, he studied painting with Fred Thieler at the Hochschule der Künste. In 1961 he joined the artists’ group Vision and after his studies in 1964 he founded, among others with Markus Lüpertz and Bernd Koberling, the Produzentengalerie (producer gallery) Großgörschen 35. In 1964 he was awarded with the Deutscher Kunstpreis der Jugend (German Art Prize of the Youth), spent one year in New York in 1966/67 and received the Villa Massimo Scholarship in Rome in 1968. Hödicke took part in numerous exhibitions, including documenta 6 in 1977. In 1974 he became professor at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. His works are represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, among others.

“I consider myself a conservative artist, conservative in my approach, because as a figurative artist I’m convinced that art is about shaping a world as seen through your own eyes.” (Karl Horst Hödicke, artnet)

photo: Elvira Hödicke