KARL HORST HÖDICKE
2017-12-04Approaching his 80th birthday, Hödicke’s early influences during the 1960s included filmmaking in New York to the role of artist-as-curator in Berlin, where he set up the influential ‘self-help’ gallery Großgörschen 35 with Marcus Lüpertz. He was subsequently a pioneer of German Neo-Expressionism and New Figuration with Baselitz, Immendorf and Penck. He was one of the main protagonists and drivers of the New Savages or Junge Wilde movement in 1978, which arose in the Germanspeaking world in opposition to established Minimal and Conceptual strategies. In this respect, Hödicke’s figuration, and his connection with various formal ‘networks’ in painting – as well as new social systems for small organisations represented by the model Großgörschen 35 – sit together with a tradition on pushing gesture and spectacle through expression. It’s important to consider that Hödicke’s main subject – the changing nature of Berlin – has been consistent for the last forty years. This is important, because, if the city of Berlin embodies history itself, then Hödicke’s pictures present not only a complex overlapping structure of alternative art historical and aesthetic time, they also show a subjective response to the ever-changing nature of political, social and economic world historical time.
Opposite – Potsdamer Straße, 1977
Exhibition runs through to December 23rd, 2017
König Galerie
259-269 Old Marylebone Road
Winchester House
NW1 5RA
London
