Heinrich Hoerle was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 constructivist

Constructivism (art)

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...

 artist of the New Objectivity

New Objectivity

The New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...

 movement.

Hoerle was born in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

. He studied at the Cologne School of Arts and Crafts but was mostly self-taught as an artist. After military service in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 he met Franz Wilhelm Seiwert

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert Franz Wilhelm Seiwert Franz Wilhelm Seiwert (March 9, 1894 – July 3, 1933 was a German painter and sculptor in a constructivist style.right|thumb|Selbstbildnis (Self-portrait) by Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, 1928, oil on canvas, 79 x 50 cm, Von der Heydt-Museum, [[Wuppertal]]...

 in 1919 and worked with him on the journal Ventilator. Together with his wife Anjelika (1899–1923), Hoerle became active in the Cologne Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

 scene. He co-founded the artists' group Stupid

Stupid (art movement)

Stupid was a short-lived grouping of constructivist artists, formed in Cologne in 1919. The founding members were Willy Fick, Heinrich Hoerle and his wife Angelika Hoerle , Anton Räderscheidt and his wife Marta Hegemann, and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert....

, and in 1920 he published the Krüppelmappe (Cripples Portfolio). Hoerle's work retained a certain dour absurdism after he adopted a figurative constructivist style influenced by the Russians

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 Vladimir Tatlin

Vladimir Tatlin

Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin was a Russian and Soviet painter and architect. With Kazimir Malevich he was one of the two most important figures in the Russian avant-garde art movement of the 1920s, and he later became the most important artist in the Constructivist movement...

 and El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky

, better known as El Lissitzky , was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works...

 and by the Dutch movement De Stijl

De Stijl

De Stijl , propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian , Vilmos Huszár , and Bart van der Leck , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld , Robert van 't Hoff , and J.J.P. Oud...

. His paintings feature generic-looking figures, presented in strict profile or in stiff, frontal poses.

In 1929 he began publication of "a-z", a journal of progressive artists. He was among the many German artists whose works were condemned as degenerate art

Degenerate art

Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...

 when the Nazis took power in 1933. He died in Cologne in 1936.