Karl Hubbuch

Who was Karl Hubbuch?

Karl Hubbuch was a German painter, printmaker, and draftsman associated with the New Objectivity.

Hubbuch was born in Karlsruhe. From 1908 to 1912, he studied art at the Karlsruhe Academy, where he formed friendships with fellow students Georg Scholz and Rudolf Schlichter. He continued his studies with Emil Orlik at the Berlin Museum of Arts and Crafts School until the First World War. From 1914 to 1918 he served in the military, where he contracted malaria. He spent the period after the war recuperating before resuming his studies in a master class at the Karlsruhe Academy. In 1924, Hubbuch was given a position as an assistant lithography instructor at the Karlsruhe Academy. He became the head of the drawing department the following year, and in 1928 he was appointed professor.

During this period, Hubbuch was much more active as a draftsman than as a painter. His drawings and prints of the early 1920s, sharply realistic in style, are highly critical of the social and economic order. A trip to Berlin in 1922—during which he met George Grosz—inspired the creation of several drawings in which Hubbuch depicted himself as an observer who reacts to the urban dynamism surrounding him. He exhibited several drawings and prints, as well as his oil painting, The Classroom, in the seminal "Neue Sachlichkeit' exhibition at the Kunsthalle in Mannheim in 1925.