biography

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Autumn 1936 : a small man is wandering through the streets of London, with a large briefcase in his hands, full of drawings ; he’s looking for a job as an illustrator in an editorial office, or a publisher. The man is an artist, born Hungarian. And he has left his country, because of the increasing violence committed by the Third Reich and was never return to his motherland again.

Youth
Imre Hofbauer was born on November 5th 1905, in Mitrovica, in the austro-hungarian Empire, and grew up in the north, in the region of Tatabanya. According to his mother, little Imre “could paint before he could speak”. At the beginning of the 1930’s, he went to Prague where he pursued studies of architecture until 1933. In order to pay for his studies at university, he became cartoonist for some Czech newspapers. Simplicissimuss,the famous German satirical weekly, also published some of his work.
Afterwards, he left Prague and went back to Budapest where he worked for the most popular dailies such as “Az est” (The evening) and “Budapesti Hirlap” (Budapest Mail). In 1935, he became the manager of the Atheneum, a rather important publisher in Central Europe, in those days.

But then, his life got more and more threatened because of his satirical cartoons against Hitler’s regime. Escaping from the Nazi persecution, he settled himself in London, where the newspapers he worked for had sent him for a report and where his close cousin Alejandro Pollack had been living for a few years. Seduced by the atmosphere of freedom that reigned in the British capital, he never left it, except for some short stays in France, Switzerland and Spain. At the beginning of the war, his mother who had remained in Hunygary, committed suicide. He never went back to Hungary ; not even in 1964, for his first individual exhibition.

The war
A few years after his arrival in London, World war two broke out. “Hof”, as his close friends used to call him, joined the fire brigade voluntarily and helped the victims of the German air raids. At the same time, in 1942, with Compton and Faith Compton Mackenzie, he published Calvary, a book of drawings illustrating the horror he had seen during the war. It was his way of defending human dignity, his way of denouncing, with a pencil and a few sheets of paper, the atrocity of the Third Reich’s crimes. Although he was quite a loner, Hofbauer spent his life defending the helpless and denouncing injustice. Born as a Jew, he nevertheless received a catholic education, and pulled from the Bible the principles which put love for your neighbour above all.

London
When the war ended, Hof had made London his home, and most of his work was devoted to the city, its buildings, its inhabitants, its everyday life. In addition to the numerous paintings he made on this subject, he published The Other London (1948), a volume of drawings ; and eighteen years later, he collaborated with Richard Church on London, Flower of Cities all (1966). In these two books, his architect’s eyes mingles with his humanist view and draws up thrilling portraits of London, with oil paint, Indian ink, and more importantly with watercolour, the transparency of which he liked most. Above all, he wanted his paintings to be witnesses of an elusive period, he wanted to prevent that era from being forgotten.

Hungary
Besides London, when we look at Imre Hofbauer’s work we can see that another topic covers a large part of his paintings: motifs referring to memories or dreams of his childhood and youth in Hungary. And then again, in addition to the paintings he made, a few books he wrote and illustrated put forward this nostalgia : Bababukra (1947), in which he gives marvellous descriptions of his country, and My Little Englishman (1945), a quasi autobiographic tale. Moreover, he painted a lot about the world of fishermen and miners, another allusion to his childhood : his father, a sailor, died when Imre was just a child, and Tatabanya, where he grew up, was a mining region.

Artistic influences
As for the artists that inspired him, and that he admired, we know that among his contemporaries, he liked George Grosz (about whom he even edited a book) and Jules Pascin. Still, the new artistic trends seem to have bored him : he wanted to be himself, detached from every fashion and was continually looking for new paths. On a scrapbook, found in his studio, this could be read : “The unspoken ideal to draw well, realistically ; drawing for drawing’s sake as did the masters of bygone days...”.
He had invented a special technique with translucent film material he made by himself, and which let him find varied and subtle shades. When he died, hundreds of proofs were found in his studio.

For the last three years of his life, our little man, who used to be very fit, could no longer go on with his usual life : he was not able to finish some paintings and manuscripts that he had started. Among others, there was thE book “on teaching art” where he stated his personal opinion on the artist’s task : “While speaking on the subject, I realise that it is harder to say than it seemed during the many years it has lived in me. So, let me state the important facet that most probably does not emerge till one spells it out : draughtsmanship has shrunk”. Hof’s vision of art seems to have been rather bitter and pessimistic during the last years of his life.

Imre Hofbauer died January 5th 1989 ; he was 84. Very soon, his deeply humanist work spread around the world, through Europe and the United-States. He received eight international prizes. All his life he has defended the grandest idea of art, and all who knew him knew that he was the most severe critic against himself, in his work and in his private life. Softly and quietly, he has painted thousands of souls, given birth to thousands of works, that are now to be found in the private collections of the people who knew and admired his art.

exhibition

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His exhibitions played only a small part in our artist’s career. Because of his modesty, he tried to avoid any direct confrontation with his public. Maybe, he felt safer hidden behind a book or a newspaper.
Unfortunately, we don’t know most of the dates and places of his exhibitions.

1964 : his first individual exhibition in Budapest. Hof refused to go back to the country where he had had to run away from almost thirty years before. The exhibition was a great success, and he was invited to expose in Paris and Montreal.
>> To read the letter from the director of this exhibition, click here

1972 : his first exhibition in London, in the Arts Limited Gallery. Around seventy paintings, among the infinite variety of his work, were presented.
>> To see the catalogue of this exhibition, click here

1974 : because of the success of his first exhibition in London, the same Gallery invited him, two years later.
>> To see the catalogue of this exhibition, click here

1977 : also in London, but this time, in the Shaw Theatre, he exposed his watercolors, and most recent work.
>> To see the catalogue of this exhibition, click here