Helmut Middendorf

Helmut Middendorf (born January 28, 1953 in Dinklage ) is a German artist.

life and work

Middendorf studied from 1973 to 1979 at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin with Karl Horst Hödicke , the foster father of Neo-Expressionism in Berlin. At the suggestion of Hödicke, Middendorf began in the late 1970s with an objective, emphatically painterly style of design. Together with Hödicke students Rainer Fetting , Salomé and Bernd Zimmer , he helped found the Moritzplatz gallery in Berlin-Kreuzberg , Moritzplatz , in 1977 , which, in addition to painting, drawing and object art, also showed films, photos and performances. From 1979 Middendorf was given a teaching position for experimental film at the Berlin University of the Arts. He had already dealt with this medium in depth during his studies, parallel to painting.

With painters like Jiří Georg Dokoupil , Rainer Fetting, Salomé and Elvira Bach, Middendorf is one of the New Wilds . It was named after the exhibition Les Nouveaux Fauves - The New Wilds , which was shown by the Neue Galerie Sammlung Ludwig in Aachen in 1980. Middendorf, Fetting, Salomé and Zimmer became known to a wider public with the group exhibition “Heftige Malerei”, which took place in early 1980 in the Berlin Haus am Waldsee.

Middendorf went to New York in 1980 with a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service . The works he created there are characterized by a greater degree of emotional serenity. By reducing the color and turning to new topics, he finds his way back to an experimental openness. At the end of the 1980s he created his black pictures , with which he wanted to reflect on his own life and his position as an artist and which he saw as a sign of a new departure.

In 2003/2004 he was represented in the exhibition Obsessive Painting - A Review of the New Wild at the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe , 2018/19 in the exhibition The Invention of the New Wild - Painting and Subculture around 1980 in the Ludwig Forum , Aachen.

Public collections

Belgium

• Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK), Ghent

Germany

• Berlinische Galerie , Berlin
• Collection of contemporary art of the Federal Republic of Germany , Bonn
• ZKM, Karlsruhe

France

• Cartier Foundation pour l'art contemporain , Paris

Portugal

• Berardo Museum - Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Lisbon

Greece

• Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art , Thessaloniki

Web links

• Eleni Koroneou Gallery
• Photo: Helmut Middendorf
• Example picture: The singer
• Literature by and about Helmut Middendorf in the catalog of the German National Library

literature

• Dieter Honisch (Vorw.): Art in the Federal Republic of Germany. 1945–1985 . National Gallery. Nicolai, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-87584-158-1 .
• Martin Feltes: Helmut Middendorf . In: Yearbook for the Oldenburger Münsterland 1999 . Vechta 1998, pp. 175-179

Individual evidence

1. ^ Exhibition information Ludwig Forum. Retrieved September 18, 2018 .