The Painter, a 1982 piece by German artist Helmut Middendorf (1953 – ), was on auction today at Artnet and I think it finally sold for $11,000. When I first saw it, I immediately fell in love with “The Painter”: Helmut is brilliant in his use of color and his rough use of material really evokes strong emotions in the viewer.
Middendorf is known for his large-scale, gestural paintings that are brilliantly-colored and representational, populated by images of nightlife, sexuality, and emotion. “The use of color in painting doesn’t mean anything else than to entertain,” the artist has said. “When you paint, you want mainly to entertain and surprise yourself.”
3 witches (mixed media on paper), Helmut MiddendorfAs a Neo-Expressionist, he studied under K.H. Hödicke, a painter and major player in Berlin’s Neo-Expressionist art scene. Middendorf’s earlier works retain a sense of tension, moving toward emotional detachment.
Neo-expressionism is a style of late modernist or early-postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists (many of them were German in the early days) pioneered a style that is characterized by intense subjectivity and rough handling of materials.
If you enjoy Helmut’s work, you can see more of his pieces here.
