Lot 247 Nα

Karl Hofer created the double portrait “Mutter und Tochter” during the final year of World War II. In 1938, following previous acts of oppression against the painter and university lecturer, the Nazis removed 313 of his works from German museums. In 1943 Hofer's studio was first destroyed by bombing, and finally his home also burned completely, destroying a large portion of his works.
“Dear Polde”, he wrote to his friend Leopold Ziegler on 1 January 1944, “for this year of misery to come, I nonetheless wish to send you greetings, a sign of life. […] Now we are on the listing plane, and the chosen ones, to whom I belong, are racing along on their journey into the world of shadows […] Most people have bad dreams, from which they are happy to awake. I, on the other hand, live only in my memories and in my dreams, which are frequent and usually pleasant, in which there is everything that this cruel world now denies to us, and the bad dream begins when I wake up.” (Karl Hofer, cited in: exhib. cat. Karl Hofer, Staatl. Kunsthalle Berlin 1978, p. 120).
Full of vitality, Hofer nevertheless dedicated himself to rebuilding his painted oeuvre. In 1944 he created female portraits in the form of individuals, pairs and relatively small groups. He painted images of mothers and daughters and female friends, “Drei Grazien”, “Drei Mädchen“ (cf., among others, Wohlert 1792-1809), which mostly point to variation and interaction. The painting offered here presents two people - described tenderly and with a certain detachment - in terms of their inner solidarity. In spite of all the hardships due to world politics, they succeed in remaining together: only a resigned and sceptical expression around the mouth of the figure on the right might suggest a reference to the situation in which Hofer found himself in 1944.
The title of the picture was handed down by the painting's previous owner, who met the painter as an American “Monuments Man” and purchased the work.