Seated Girl with Raised Left Arm, n. d.

In his etching Seated Girl with Raised Left Arm, Karl Hubbuch (1891–1979) presents a unique figure that appears awkward and naive and is depicted in a frontal view with curiously shifted axes and out-of-whack proportions. With her pleated blouse, her taut, patterned skirt, her striped stockings and her dark, slightly frayed bob, the girl with large, overly emphasized eyes and rigid features seems to be communicating directly with us. Her raised left hand covers parts of her face. Her right hand rests on the turned wood of the post-like leg of what seems to be an unusual and massive stool. Her arm seems disproportionately large and grows out of the girl’s rounded shoulders to cross the image in a bright diagonal line. The only things that position the curious figure in a very narrow interior setting are the wooden floor, hinted at with floorboards depicted in parallel perspective and a baseboard, as well as a truncated framed portrait of a girl on the wall. Hubbuch evokes the impression of a clumsy drawing created by a child. The Karlsruhe-born painter and lithographer uses his skills as a draftsman who had already shown great talent at an early age to play with the creative possibilities of the seemingly credible and to create strange and mysterious realities. The National Socialist regime banned Hubbuch from working, alleging that he was creating “degenerate” art.

MH, 2021