Acrylic on paper, 99 x 70 cm
"Still Life with Flame" shows a table with a flower vase in dark, strong and powerful colors. In the foreground is a rose, depicted as a flame. "The colours have inspired me," says Karl Horst Hödicke about his first conscious perception of painting (the pictures of the "Brücke" and the "Blauer Reiter") when he was about 16 years old. This painting shows one aspect of his repertoire of themes, in which he captures moments of marginal events. Intentionally, these themes at first seem weightless, "have thrown off the ballast of the significant" (Heinrich Klotz) and formulate his view of things.

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.