Josef Hofer: Reckless Grace: Online Exclusive

Josef Hofer was born in 1945. He and his brother experienced learning difficulties and hearing and speech impairments, which led their parents to choose an isolated life on a farm in Upper Austria to protect them from bullying and ostracization by their peers. Born just months before the end of World War II, Hofer's family faced additional pressures from the war's aftermath and later tensions with the Soviets. After Hofer’s father died in 1982, his mother moved the family to Kirchschlag. This relocation allowed Hofer and his brother to benefit from increased social contact and access to a day clinic. Hofer was eventually admitted to an institution in Ried, where his creativity and artistic inclinations were nurtured by visiting art historians.

Hofer’s oeuvre tells the story of a uniquely introspective life, they evoke a visceral experience of humanity. His works cut to the core of the creative process—with bold, incessant graphite marks, paired with geometrically separated figures, and planes colored in a signature, sharp style. Hofer’s figures attempt to break free from their boundaries with reckless grace, often crushed against the dimensions of the paper, perhaps mimicking the artist’s seclusion from the wider world. Washed in warm, saturated tones, the figures in the works presented here evoke a sensation of exposure; of a frank appeal to their audience, cemented by the indents of pressured mark making and the waxy sheen of colored pencil.

Hofer has been featured in many exhibitions and publications. Over the past two decades, his work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and the Maison Rouge in Paris; the DOX in Prague; the National Museum Soares dos Reis in Porto; and the Kunstmuseum Thurgau / Ittinger Museum in Warth, Switzerland.
 
This online exhibition is part of an ongoing collaboration with christian berst art brut in Paris.