Heinrich Hoerle (1 September 1895 – 7 July 1936) was a German constructivist artist of the New Objectivity movement.
Hoerle was born in Cologne. 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 he met Franz Wilhelm Seiwert in 1919 and worked with him on the journal Ventilator.[1] Together with his wife Angelika (1899–1923), Hoerle became active in the Cologne Dada scene. He co-founded the artists' group Stupid, and in 1920 he published the Krüppelmappe (Cripples Portfolio).[1] Hoerle's work retained a certain dour absurdism after he adopted a figurative constructivist style influenced by the Russians Vladimir Tatlin and El Lissitzky, by Fernand Léger, and by the Dutch movement De Stijl.[2] His paintings feature generic-looking figures, presented in strict profile or in stiff, frontal poses.
In 1929 he began collaboration with Seiwert and Walter Stern on the publication of "a-z", the journal of the Cologne Progressives art group.[3] He was among the many German artists whose works were condemned as degenerate art when the Nazis took power in 1933.[4] He died in Cologne in 1936 at the age of 40.
Public collections holding works by Heinrich Hoerle include Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Kölnisches Stadtmuseum; Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf; The Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal; and the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.