Karl Horst Hödicke is regarded as an important representative of Neo-Expressionism and, alongside artists such as Georg Baselitz and Jörg Immendorf, as a pioneer of a new figurative art that turned away from the prevailing trends of abstraction from the 1960s onwards. His work also influenced the later generation of Neue Wilde artists who emerged in Germany in the 1980s. Hödicke captures his expressive visual worlds with a powerful, dynamic style and a diverse palette of colours, ranging from muted tones to the non-colours black and white to a strikingly luminous colouring, bringing out the chosen subject to maximum effect. His motifs are frequently inspired by the big city: Above all, Berlin is a recurring topic; however, portraits and other subjects also find their way into his work, which the artist captures with great immediacy and spontaneous gestures.
Karl Horst Hödicke (born 1938 in Nuremberg) studied architecture for one semester in 1959 before joining Fred Thieler's class at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste. After completing his studies in 1964, in rebellion against the prevailing art establishment, he founded one of the first producer galleries with Markus Lüpertz, Hans-Jürgen Diehl and other artist colleagues: Großgörschen 35. Hödicke, who was a scholarship holder at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1968, took part in documenta 6 in 1977 and the Venice Biennale in 1990. From 1974 he taught as a professor for over 30 years at the Hochschule der Künste (from 2001 Berlin University of the Arts). In 2020, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich showed a comprehensive retrospective of the artist, whose work has been presented in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally.
Works by Hödicke are represented in renowned collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Busch Reisinger Museum, Cambridge; MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona; Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin and the Museum Brandhorst, Munich.