Pencil drawing, partly with watercolor
Signed lower right. Inscribed on verso (by the artist?) "Karl Hubbuch Karlsruhe "Mädie" kolor. Zeichnung". On light cardboard. 61,5 x 52 cm (24,2 x 20,4 in), size of sheet
Verso: Young standing woman in coat and hat. Pencil sketch.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Northern Germany.

Karl Hubbuch was born in Karlsruhe in 1891 and studied at the Akademie in Karlsruhe from 1908 to 1912: Then he switched to the school of the ‘Museum der angewandten Künste’ in Berlin and became a pupil of Emil Orlik. His training was interrupted by 4 years of military service, but he continued studying in 1920 at the Landeskunstschule in Karlsruhe as a master pupil in Walter Conz und Würtenberger's engravings class. Hubbuch encountered Georg Scholz' and George Grosz' works. Parallels are existing on a formal level - the combinative composition of elements in different scales and points of view and the separating of motifs are comparable. In 1922 the artist moved to Berlin. There Hubbuch attended - inspired by Orlik and Grosz - to the depiction of city life, which also show socio-critical and political points of view.

Nobody else besides Karl Hubbuch possesses such great mastery in depicting the hunger for life of the post-war generation, particularly in his works from the 1920s. The optical presence of Hubbuch‘s female figures are an expression of a time of changes, the loss of old values in expectancy of a new and uncertain future. With a drawing style that has been trained under academic norms, which rather reveals than covers with its clear line management, the figures of Karl Hubbuch‘s drawings are heroes of a petty bourgeoisie whose overcoming they aspire. The strong and self-confident women that Hubbuch describes in his drawings seem to live a life of their own which is depicted in a direct Realism apart from any embellishment and without excluding a focus on narrative elements. In this respect Hubbuch even goes beyond the spirit of New Objectivity, his art appears to be more drawn from life and familiar.

In 1925 he was asked to teach at the Karlsruhe Landeskunstschule where he was appointed professor in 1928. The artist was able to attend to oil painting, mainly objective scenes from every-day life came into being. During the 1920s and early 1930s Hubbuch's works were shown in numerous exhibitions, e.g. the 'Neue Sachlichkeit' in Mannheim in 1925. Already at the end of the 1920s Hubbuch's style changed again, which was manifested in a loosening up, a pastose painting style and a more unified body and space conception in his panel and canvas paintings. In 1933 he was suspended in Karlsruhe and had to live on occasional jobs. In 1947 he resumed his teaching position and switched to the academy one year later to become professor. From 1957 the artist worked again freelance. Hubbuch dealt intensively with Max Beckmann's work during the 1950s and developed an expressive form language. At the same time he also turned to woodcuts. In his last style period Hubbuch tied up to the 1930s, was again the physiognomic who described classes with his figures and who connected social and historic interrelations. Furth he worked with repetitions and overworks of earlier paintings. Karl Hubbuch died in Karlsruhe on 26 December 1979. [KD].