K.H. Hödicke came to Berlin at the age of 19 and stayed. After a semester of architecture at the TU, he moved to Fred Thieler's painting class at the HdK and remained there: first as a student - and later as a professor from 1974 to 2005. Short stays took him to New York for a year in 1966 and to the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1968.
Together with Markus Lüpertz and Bernd Koberling, he made history in 1965 when they founded the first producers' gallery, the legendary "Großgörschen 35", which had an impact far beyond the borders of Berlin. His participation in documenta 6 in 1977, his first retrospective at Haus am Waldsee in 1981 and, most recently, the major retrospective at the Berlinische Galerie in 2013. Berlin has been a central theme and motif throughout the decades of his work: starting in the 1960s with the "Reflections", big city scenes in diffuse light, realised in fragmentary compositions; then much more directly with the architectural pictures of the 1970s and 1980s; right up to the painterly documentation of Berlin as a major construction site in the 1990s.
Hödicke portrayed his city in each of its phases with his unmistakable brushstroke and became an important role model for an entire younger generation - and not just as a teacher of the "Neue Wilden".
On the occasion of the new publication of the book "K.H. Hödicke. Berlin Potsd. Pl.", edited by Hans Neuendorf, a discussion with Karl Horst Hödicke and Holger Liebs (editor-in-chief, Monopol) will take place on the evening of the exhibition opening.