Andreas Schulze Ohne Titel (Untitled)

Andreas Schulze
b. 1955
Ohne Titel (Untitled)

i. signed Andreas Schulze and dated April 1982 (on the reverse)
dispersion on nettle, in 2 parts
Overall: 270 by 330 cm.
107 by 130 in.
Executed in April 1982.

Catalogue Note:
The Cologne based artist Andreas Schulze is one of the standout individuals of the artistic developments within German contemporary painting. He discovered a unique painting style with its reformation of simple designs and forms creating a contradiction between a cryptical but at the same time familiar appearance. With this, the artist established his own characteristic style. Despite Schulze’s strong independent artistic thinking, he did retrieve inspiration and approaches from many different artist’s oeuvres and art historical references. His work can be seen as a new perspective and a new position to the art ideal and theories dominating the decades before. Despite his contacts to the Neue Wilde (New Fauves) and other Cologne based artists, Schulze established his individual very distinctive way of painting which seeks to combine the absurd with the representational.

In 1981, Schulze moved away from gestural realism to depicting crystalline shapes in a facette of bright colours. The present work, with its orange pyramid shaped staircase underneath two cloud shaped elements hanging in front of a bright blue sky, is representative of Schulze’s ability to create these atmospheric images. The two suspending “clouds” are reminiscent of cotton balls or balloons, as they seem to float weightless in the sky. However, for Schulze these elements are much heavier. The composition makes an atmospheric space visible, but the reference to reality remains secondary. Schulze's typical shorthand for space and volume - i.e. every rounded structure comes with a dark shadow on one side and a white glistening shine on the other, in the purposefully simplified manner of a children's animation. The light has no discernible direction.

The painting transmits an outstanding impression of its elements developing through the dimension of the special sphere within the created room. In his works, Schulze almost always sticks to acrylic on nettle as his preferred medium as similar to a watercolour, it allows for a rapid painting method without pre-drawing and corrections. He further experiments with different forms within a composition by creating different versions of a painting by just changing its details in a very minimal and almost unrecognisable way.

In May 1982, Schulze had his first ever solo exhibition at the Galerie Six Friedrich in Munich, where this painting was also shown.

Andreas Schulze studied at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf where he now teaches as professor in the department for painting. His works have been exhibited internationally such as MoMA, New York, Tate Britain, London, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg and Kunsthalle Bielefeld.

Provenance:
Gallery Six Friedrich, Munich

Acquired from the above by the present owner