Lasting
Presence.
An archival presence returning through painting, memory and continuity. J.K.S. Hohburg emerges again as a living voice inside the curatorial structure of W/ Soul.
Estate InquiryA Munich Voice.
Recovered.
Josef Konrad Senft, known by his artistic pseudonym J.K.S. Hohburg, was born in Hohenburg, Oberpfalz, Bavaria in 1932. He spent seven decades developing one of the most significant — and least documented — artistic practices of his generation in Germany.
He worked primarily in painting, accumulating over 600 works across a career that spanned from the postwar reconstruction era through the turn of the century. His practice operated largely outside the commercial gallery circuit of his time, producing a body of work preserved without market validation.
Hohburg died in Munich in 2002, leaving behind an intact archive that W/ Soul now manages as part of its long-term institutional mission. The recovery is underway.
Why Hohburg
Matters.
Hohburg's position in German art history is defined by three intersecting facts that, taken together, make his archive exceptional.
His proximity to Karl Schmidt-Rottluff — one of the founders of Die Brücke and a cornerstone of German Expressionism — places Hohburg in direct lineage with a tradition of emotional and structural intensity that defines the 20th century. His role as Vermittler-Gründer — founding member and mediating force — in the 1957 formation of Gruppe SPUR in Schwabing connects him to the postwar avant-garde at its most radical moment. And his acquisition by the Berlinische Galerie confirms institutional recognition during his lifetime — even if broader reception has been slow.
What makes the estate particularly significant is the completeness of the archive. Unlike many artists whose work is fragmented across collections or lost, Hohburg's 600+ works exist as a coherent body — intact and awaiting full curatorial attention.
Die Brücke · German Expressionism
Last Meisterschüler · original certificate extant
Vermittler-Gründer · Situationist International
Postwar Munich avant-garde
600+ works — intact archive
W/ Soul Legacy Estate (2026)
600+ Works.
In Cataloging.
The Hohburg estate is currently in active cataloging phase at W/ Soul. The works span painting, drawing and works on paper across seven decades. Full access to the archive is available to institutions and serious collectors by appointment.
The Reason
W/ Soul Exists.
The Hohburg estate is not an accidental addition to W/ Soul's programme. It is, in many ways, the reason the gallery exists in its current form.
W/ Soul was founded with the conviction that the art world produces archives faster than it consumes them — that there are artists of genuine historical weight whose work sits in storage, waiting for a curatorial structure willing to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.
Hohburg is the most complete version of that argument W/ Soul has encountered. A German artist, present at a foundational avant-garde moment, trained in a lineage that connects directly to the Expressionist tradition, collected by a major institution — and still largely unknown outside Munich.
"Hohburg's archive teaches us something important about how art history is made: not always through visibility, but through survival. His 600 works survived not because they were exhibited, sold or canonized in his lifetime — but because someone kept them. That act of keeping is itself a curatorial decision. Our task now is to make that decision visible, to build the institutional and editorial context that allows Hohburg's practice to re-enter the conversation it always deserved to be part of."