Andy Hope 1930

Andreas Hofer was born in 1963 in Munich, Germany. He began signing his work as "Andy Hope 1930" in the late 1990s, and formally adopted the name as his public artist identity around 2010, though gallery and museum materials consistently note that the signature dates to the start of his career. He lives and works in Berlin.

Hope's practice draws on superheroes, dinosaurs, devils, spaceships, and other pulp and pop-cultural figures, often painting over found or previously used canvases and referencing the geometric language of early Minimalism and Kasimir Malevich. Museum and gallery texts describe the work as an effort to destabilize familiar narratives and symbols of power drawn from American comics, film, and popular literature.

His institutional profile grew through the 2000s and 2010s with solo exhibitions at Sammlung Goetz in Munich (2009), the Freud Museum in London (2010), Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (2012 to 2013), and Hauser & Wirth in Zurich (2015). In 2017 his work was included in "Viva Arte Viva" at the 57th Venice Biennale. He has continued to show internationally, with a 2025 solo exhibition, "Companions," at OSCAAR Mouligne in Kyoto, and a 2026 solo presentation with Hauser & Wirth.

Hope's work has drawn sustained attention for its treatment of comic-book and film imagery as material for serious painting, rather than as pastiche. The Guardian profiled him as part of its "Artist of the week" series in 2010, coinciding with his Freud Museum exhibition, describing his layered, overpainted canvases and his interest in fictional and historical villains. Museum texts from Sammlung Goetz and other institutions have situated his practice within a longer German tradition of engaging popular and mass-media imagery through painting. Reception has generally emphasized the density and legibility of his references over any single unifying theory, with critics and curators returning to his recurring interest in destabilized narratives of power.

Hope's auction history is comparatively thin, and the public record on his top price is unresolved. One specialized art-market database identifies "Hollywood On The Moon" as his highest recorded result, at a GBP 30,000 price realized in April 2013; the auction house and sale city are not specified in that source. A separate market-data provider instead lists a work titled "4419," sold at Phillips London in 2011, at USD 47,189, as the artist's record. Neither figure has been independently corroborated by a second source, and the two claims describe different works, prices, and years, so collectors should treat any single "record price" for this artist with caution until it can be checked against a primary auction-house record. He is currently represented by Galerie Guido W. Baudach in Berlin, and has exhibited with Hauser & Wirth, Lomex, Galerie Christine Mayer, OSCAAR Mouligne, and other galleries.

The public record on Hope's auction activity is not fully settled: two market-data sources report different works as his top result, at different prices and years, and neither has been confirmed against a primary auction record. No catalogue raisonne has been identified for the artist, and there is no public certificate-of-authenticity program; questions of authenticity are best directed to his representing gallery, Galerie Guido W. Baudach. His deepest credibility signal is institutional and curatorial: a long, well-documented exhibition history with major museums, galleries, and the Venice Biennale, though public museum collection holdings could not be independently confirmed for this profile, and he has so far transacted more through galleries than at public auction.