Acrylic on canvas, 130 x 190 cm
Hödicke's pictures depict the direct reflexes of his Berlin surroundings. This also applies to the "Pflasterbilder", colorful interpretations of the wet cobblestone pavement in the German capital. "The colors inspired me," he says about his first conscious perception of painting (the pictures of the "Brücke" and the "Blauer Reiter" groups of artists) when he was about 16 years old. From 1973 "(...) he took up his former themes of neon signs and light reflections again, which he concluded with the series of pavement pictures. (...) The pattern of geometric abstraction is a pattern of reality: the cuboid structure of the pavement, which is drawn into the dark. It is characteristic of Hödicke's inventiveness that he does not paint any abstract geometric pattern, but searched reality for the compositional ideas of geometric abstraction and found the rain-soaked pavement, gleaming in the light, as a subject for interpretation. (from: Heinrich Klotz, "Die Neuen Wilden in Berlin", Stuttgart Klett-Cotta, 1984, p. 46)

Karl Horst Hödicke (*1938 in Nuremberg, Germany) is considered a pioneer of New Figuration and Neo-Expressionism and had a decisive influence on the Neue Wilde. In 1957, he moved with his family from Vienna to Berlin and began studying there, first architecture, then painting at the Hochschule der Künste. While still a student, he joined the artists' group "Vision" in 1961, and in 1964 he founded the Galerie Großgörschen 35, together with other young painters, including the now renowned artists Markus Lüpertz and Bernd Koberling. This gallery was an experiment, one of the first self-help galleries ever and served as a model for further projects of this kind. The young painters wanted to set an example against the rigid established art business.

Hödicke became one of the most famous artists in Germany and taught his own painting class at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste between 1974 and 2005. There he influenced, among others, Helmut Middendorf and Salomé, who were to become outstanding representatives of the Neue Wilde and who were also displayed at the academy. Hödicke looks back on a very successful life as an artist and lives and works in Berlin, today. His focus is on painting, drawings, sculptures, objects, films, neo-expressionism, process art, plastic experiments and experimental films.