Josef Hofer never went to school at all. He was often taken along on the work in the fields. He played with dolls and carvings, such as wooden horses, that his father made for him. He had been interested in agricultural implements ever since he was small and, even as a child, he drew them on a piece of paper. In 1985, Josef Hofer came to the day centre in Linz of the Lebenshilfe Oberösterreich, later to Grein, and since 1992 he has lived and worked in the Lebenshilfe Ried in the Innkreis district.

Hofer's pictures must be conquered. One is impressed by his unmistakable graphic handwriting, which is stamped with a powerful, almost cramped pencil stroke. Though the subject matter is easy to recognize - objects from his surroundings, from his everyday life, landscapes he lives in, there are also numerous figures and nudes alongside, embedded in a usually yellow-orange background, in which they threaten almost to disappear. He combines the figurative with the abstract. In his methodology, he always proceeds in the same way: he starts with one or more figures, which he encloses and surrounds with the background, so that the latter often dominates and the subject can hardly be recognized any more. Josef Hofer encloses his nude, protecting his intimate space, so to speak. He works intensively on the surface of the paper. If the landscape pictures give the impression of being lighter, less "worked on", the figure drawings, because of his intensive characteristic style, obtain a unique colour structure, the dirt from the eraser and from the background often produce new colours and a very original surface structure. Since autumn 2003, Josef Hofer has been underlaying his figures with this chequered or lined background. He uses a strip of wood as a ruler for this.

Josef Hofer, has created a home for himself despite his handicap, within his institution but also by his Art. His artistic sources are his imagination and his dreams, his subjective experiences and observations.