Josef Hofer

Josef Hofer might not speak, but he draws constantly. He was born in 1945 and spent his early life on a farm in Upper Austria. The family lived in isolation since Josef and his brother both suffered from learning difficulties and hearing and speech problems – Joseph also had impaired mobility – and his father wished to spare them from being teased by the locals and, more importantly, to protect them from the Nazis and, later, the Soviets. When Josef’s father died in 1982, his mother took him and his brother to live in Kirschlag, giving him the chance for some social contact and the opportunity to attend a day clinic. These changes proved beneficial, and Josef even spoke a few words. He later became an inpatient at an institution in Ried, where Elisabeth Telsnig spotted his love of drawing and encouraged his creativity.

Pepi, as he signs his works, observed and narrated his own life. His works are a mirror reflecting himself and the spectator and revealing the hypnotic infancy of art. As Michel Thévoz writes, “Josef Hofer is in a state of grace” – an erotic, untrammelled form of grace where the body strives to break free from the prison of the frame. The sensual, raw nudity shines through the confident, unpolished lines in warm hues.

Since the retrospective organized by the Collection de l’Art Brut in 2003, numerous exhibitions and publications have been dedicated to him. His drawings, which we first presented at the gallery in 2008, are now part of the world’s largest collections of outsider art.
Presented by the Museum of Everything in Turin in 2010, a retrospective accompanied by a catalog was dedicated to him the same year in Prague. Another, a unique event in the history of the Collection de l’Art Brut, was dedicated to him again in 2011 in Lausanne, coupled this time with the publication of a significant monograph.
Josef Hofer was featured twice at the Maison Rouge in 2014 in the exhibitions “Le Mur, œuvres de la collection Antoine de Galbert” and “art brut, collection abcd/Bruno Decharme.” Since then, a set of his drawings was exhibited in 2022 at DOX in Prague in the exhibition POWER(LESS), as well as at the National Museum Soares dos Reis in Porto, while over 250 of his drawings were presented at the Kunstmuseum Thurgau / Ittinger Museum in Warth, Switzerland.