The record player

Characteristic of Karl Hofer's paintings, The Record Player depicts a single figure set in a domestic interior. The figure's isolation and blank expression, combined with Hofer's somber palatte, create a tone of melancholy that is typical throughout his work. Some historians point to the disturbing qualities of Hofer's pantings as indicative of his disillusionment with the social and political climate in germany at the time. Just a few years before painting The Record Player, Hofer was condemned by the Nazis as a degenerate artist and removed from his teaching post at Berlin's Hochschule für Bildende Künste. His paintings we confiscated.