Neo-Expressionist artist Karl Horst Hödicke has died at 85.

Portrait of Karl Horst Hödicke. © Courtesy of the artist and KÖNIG GALERIE.

Karl Horst Hödicke, a prominent artist in the Neo-Expressionist movement whose work was a counterpoint to German minimalist art in the 1970s, has passed away at 85. KÖNIG GALERIE, which has represented the artist since 2013, confirmed his death.

Born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1937, Hödicke first moved to Berlin in 1957. There, he enrolled at the Technical University for Architecture before attending Berlin University of the Arts. He presented his first exhibition in then-West Berlin in 1964 at his own exhibition space, Großgörschen 35. This marked the beginning of an influential career that spanned seven decades, in which he developed his Neo-Expressionist style alongside contemporaries like Georg Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz.

Later, as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, he nurtured the next generation of artists, among them Helmut Middendorf and Salomé, leaving a profound mark on the “Junge Wilde” (Young Wild Ones) movement.

Over the decades, Hödicke created thousands of paintings alongside a body of work that included works on paper, sculpture, and video. Hödicke’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions globally, including significant shows like “Master Prints from the Collection” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1996 and “Art in Berlin 1815–1989” at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 1989.

Hödicke had a notable 2019 retrospective that traveled from the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich to the Palais Populaire in Berlin and a major solo exhibition at the Hall Art Foundation in Derneburg, Germany, in 2020. Today, his work is featured in collections including the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Karl Horst Hödicke

Schiffbruch, 1981

KÖNIG GALERIE

€65,000