Composition in Grey (1952) by Bernard Schultze
portrait of the Princess of Leiningen (late 19th century) by Bernard Schultze
portrait of the Princess of Leiningen (late 19th century) by Bernard Schultze
portrait of the Princess of Leiningen with child (late 19th century) by Bernard Schultze
Migof of Chelsea by Bernard Schultze

Bernard Schultze

1915–2005 · German

Most of Bernard Schultze's early paintings burned in a Berlin air raid in 1945[3]. He was thirty years old and the work was gone. What followed was a career built from almost nothing: Schultze co-founded the Quadriga group with Karl Otto Gotz and two other artists, producing some of the most committed gestural abstraction in postwar Germany.

Key facts

Lived
1915–2005, German[3]
Works held in
10 museums[1]
Wikipedia
View article

Biography

Born in 1915[3] in Schneidemuehl (now Pila, Poland), Schultze came of age under a regime that had made figurative painting a political instrument. His rejection of representation was not merely aesthetic. In 1953[3] he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that young German[3] artists had repudiated figurative and realist art for its proximity to Social Realism; abstraction was both a moral position and an artistic one. He worked within the German Informel milieu centred on Dusseldorf's Galerie 22, alongside Gotz, Gerhard Hoehme, and Fred Thieler, part of a generation for whom painting's first duty was to shed the pictorial vocabulary of the Third Reich.

His mature work is characterised by gestural abstraction in fluorescent, psychedelic colour, with forms that constantly threaten to resolve into figures and landscapes before dissolving back into pigment. He was also known for the Migof series: biomorphic creature-paintings in which invented organisms appear to grow from the canvas surface, somewhere between nightmare and natural history. He married the painter Ursula Bluhm in 1955[3], and the couple shared a commitment to painting as visceral material process.

His canvases entered the collections of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Tate in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He received the Officers Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and died in Cologne in 2005[3], aged eighty-nine.

Timeline

  1. 1915Born in Schneidemuehl, now Pila, Poland.
  2. 1945Many of his early paintings were destroyed in a Berlin air raid; he was 30 years old.
  3. 1953Stated that young German artists had rejected figurative and realist art due to its association with Social Realism.
  4. 1955Married the painter Ursula Bluhm.
  5. 1955Co-founded the Quadriga group with Karl Otto Gotz and other artists.
  6. 1955Began working within the German Informel milieu centred on Dusseldorf's Galerie 22.
  7. 2005Died in Cologne, aged 89.

Notable Works

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Frequently Asked Questions

  • What is Bernard Schultze known for?
    Bernard Schultze is known for his gestural abstraction in fluorescent, psychedelic colour, with forms that threaten to resolve into figures before dissolving back into pigment. He is also known for the Migof series, which feature biomorphic creature-paintings of invented organisms that appear to grow from the canvas surface. His canvases are in the collections of the Museum Ludwig, the Tate, and MoMA.
  • Who was Bernard Schultze?
    Bernard Schultze was a German[3] artist who co-founded the Quadriga group and produced gestural abstraction in postwar Germany. He rejected representation in his art, which he saw as a moral and artistic position against the figurative and realist art associated with Social Realism. He married the painter Ursula Bluhm in 1955[3].
  • What was Bernard Schultze's art style?
    Bernard Schultze's mature work is characterised by gestural abstraction in fluorescent, psychedelic colour. His forms constantly threaten to resolve into figures and landscapes before dissolving back into pigment. He was also known for the Migof series, biomorphic creature-paintings in which invented organisms appear to grow from the canvas surface.
  • When was Bernard Schultze born?
    Bernard Schultze was born in 1915[3]. Bernard Schultze died in 2005[3], aged 90.
  • How did Bernard Schultze die?
    Bernard Schultze died in 2005[3] at the age of 90.

Sources

Editorial draws on the following primary and tertiary references for Bernard Schultze.

  1. [1] museum Harvard Art Museums Used for: museum holdings.
  2. [2] museum Victoria and Albert Museum Used for: museum holdings.
  3. [3] wikipedia Wikipedia: Bernard Schultze Used for: biography, birth dates, death dates, identifiers, movement attribution, nationality.
  4. [4] book guggenheim-handboo00pegg Used for: biography, stylistic analysis.
  5. [5] book guggenheim-refigur00kren Used for: biography, stylistic analysis.
  6. [6] book Masterpieces of western art : a history of art in 900 individual studies from the Gothic to the present day Used for: biography, stylistic analysis.

Editorial overseen by Solis Prints. Sources verified 2026-05-24. Click a source for details, or hover over [N] in the page above to preview.

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