(born 1953 in Dirklage, lives in Berlin)
‘Woman in pink light’, on the reverse titled, signed, dated H. Middendorf 1981, synthetic resin in color on muslin, 220 x 177 cm, framed

Provenance:
Albert Baronian Gallery, Brussels (label on the reverse)

Exhibition: Groningen, Helmut Middendorf, Groninger Museum, 1983, exh.-cat. no 45 with ill

The world of Middendorf´s paintings shows the reality of the imaginary discotheque world and of the ‘electric nights’; it shows that part of big city life which is at home in the night and takes place under the glitter of artificial starlight. […] The painting itself is accepted in a markedly unproblematic naturalness and put to use in a traditional way. Emphasis is put on the surface in such a way that from a representation where perspective plays a role, one always has the impression that the objects, houses and bridges are fighting their way up from the background into the foreground. […] The painting propels itself forward the light, an element which plays a chief role in all of Middendorf´s paintings. All colors, substance and life come from light, in the aesthetic sense. Contrary to what we may first think, it is not only the sun which is intended by energetic light, not only daylight; but transcendental light as well as the light showers in this painting. […] This primary light is particularly dense in certain places where people gather to perform their rituals. […] The faces have lost their familiar lines; we see only eyes, red mouths, faint impressions of a nose, black heads and intense violence in the bodies. […]
For the dancing in the discos and in the imaginary rooms of ‘red nights’, driven by libidinous and somatic currents, allows us to see an empyrean which suddenly breaks into the dusky underground of our society. Inertia is like death.
‘Helmut Middendorf’, Galerie & Edition Buchmann, St. Gallen, 1982, St. Gallen, Pages 2-5. From the Schumacher Collection Part II