KARL HORST HÖDICKE

PALAIS POPULAIRE BERLIN
9 OCTOBER 2020 – 8 MARCH 2021

After initially being shown at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the retrospective K.H. HÖDICKE was then seen at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin. The exhibition offers insight into an almost inexhaustible artistic oeuvre and in its juxtaposition of drawings, paintings, and sculpture demonstrates that K. H. Hödicke today is to be counted among the classics but that his decades-spanning work has retained its freshness and topicality.
As in Munich, the focus of the exhibition is on K. H. Hödicke’s large-format paintings on paper from the 1970s and 1980s, in which he recorded his artistic research over two decades. He also speaks of them as “trial runs”, in which he composes motifs, varies them in series, and comes up with ever new artistic solutions during the working process.

The paintings on paper were preceded by so-called DIN A4 drawings from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, which occupy a special position in the work cycle of small-format drawings. Their pictorial ideas appear as contemporary documentation of this decade. Comprised of more than 140 drawings, 80 of which are on display in the exhibition, the present DIN A4 catalogue is devoted exclusively to this group of works.

© All images Mathias Schormann

The paper works are completed by a selection of his so-called croquis studies on reclaimed cardboard, which were created during a short intensive period in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In these studies, Hödicke once again reduces his colour intensity and encapsulates a pictorial concept with just a few brushstrokes.