Portrait of Antoinette Stern
  • Karl Hubbuch
  • Karlsruhe 1891 - 1979
  • Portrait of Antoinette Stern, 1922
  • Pencil on paper,
  • signed on the lower left: Hubbuch
  • 300 × 304 mm
Exhibitions:
Galleria del Levante, Munich
Galerie Hasenclever, Munich
Nolan / Eckman Gallery, New York
Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

Hubbuch began his artistic training at the State Academy of Art in his hometown of Karlsruhe. He then transferred to Emil Orlik’s class at the school of the Museum of Applied Arts in Berlin, where he studied from 1912 to 1920. There he came into contact with Georg Grosz, who, like Orlik, supported the young painter in his efforts to achieve greater objectivity of style. Both of these role models motivated Hubbuch to take the urban life of Berlin and all of its glittering facets as his subject matter, although his primary interest remained in the depiction of people in his surroundings. Portrait drawings of mostly female models occupy an important place in Hubbuch’s oeuvre and reflect the social unrest of those turbulent years. The painter made the acquaintance of the “Fräulein Antoinette Stern” depicted here at the very beginning of his time in Berlin and frequently portrayed her until his return to Karlsruhe in 1925.

As a painter of the Neue Sachlichkeit, Hubbuch had to give up his teaching position at the state art school in Karlsruhe under political pressure in 1933. Only in 1947 was he rehabi- litated, receiving a professorship one year later, this time at Karlsruhe’s academy.