Lot 214 D

This painting was created in 1912, presumably in Paris, after Hofer had journeyed through India for half a year in 1909 and again in 1911. These two journeys were of decisive significance for his artistic and personal development, because they lastingly shaped his image of humanity. Hofer primarily stayed along the Malabar Coast, where he was captivated not only by the paradisiacal landscape but also by the exotic people, in part still untouched by civilisation. Here Hofer's aspirations and his yearning found an appropriate and fertile soil. Stylistically - in India and subsequently in Paris - he discovered his taste for depicting ascetic figures that clearly reveal the influence of the Mannerist style of the painter El Greco, whose work Hofer became familiar with and learned to appreciate in Paris, thanks to Julius Meier-Graefe. The composition shows interesting features, it is decidedly vertical and, on the other hand, bound to the forms of vegetation. The light shines from the front left and illuminates the baroquely curvilinear linen cloth as well as the slender, supple bodies of the two youths. Hofer not only maintained the classical tendency but also the lyric and touching quality of this composition in his later work. In 1913 he returned to Germany, where he settled in Berlin.