Migof-Zentaurisch. 1975.
Grisaille in Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated lower right. Verso signed, dated and titled. With inscription "A 113" on stretcher. 165 x 249,5 cm (64,9 x 98,2 in).

We are grateful to Dr. Barbara Herrmann, Cologne, for her kind support in cataloging this lot. The work is registered in the artist's handwritten catalog raisonné and will be included into the forthcoming catalog raisonné.

PROVENANCE: Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia.
Galerie Brusberg, Hanover.
Private collection Hesse.

EXHIBITION: Bernard Schultze. "Die Welt des Migofs", Galerie Brusberg, Hanover 1975, illu. in catalog on p. 47.
Bernard Schultze. Städt. Museum Schloß Morsbroich, Leverkusen 1979, illu. in catalog on p. 47, illu. 34).
Bernard Schultze. "Im Labyrinth", Düsseldorf/ Berlin/ Frankfurt a. M./ Saarbrücken 1980-1981, catalog Berlin 1980, p. 189, illu. p. 146, cat. no. 90.
Bernard Schultze. Gegenwelten, Museum Küppersmühle from 19 October, 2012 to 20 January, 2013.

Bernard Schultze was born on 31 May in Schneidemühl (West Prussia). After his Abitur he studied at the art academies in Berlin and Düsseldorf from 1934 to 1939. His entire work produced before 1945 was destroyed during an air raid on Berlin in 1945. Schultze moved to Frankfurt two years later where he began making his first informel paintings in 1951. An exhibition of the artist group 'Quadriga' in 1952, of which he was a co-founder, in the 'zimmer galerie franck' in Frankfurt included works by the artist. The group's aim was to move away from figurative and formalistic abstraction towards the international avant-garde movements Action Painting and Tachisme.

In 1955 Schultze married the painter Ursula Bluhm and he made his first relief paintings with different materials stuck onto the canvas. The so-called 'tabuskris' (tabulae scriptae), works combining painting and drawing made from 1957, were followed by the 'Migofs' in 1961. This name, invented by Schultze, refers to constructions and creatures, which, in his eyes, exist among the creatures of nature. He travelled regularly to Paris and New York during this period, before moving from Frankfurt to Cologne in 1968. He travelled to Russia, the USA and Asia. He was elected a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 1972. Schultze achieved an important late woke, on which he worked intensively until his death

His work has been awarded a number of prizes: he was honoured with the title of a 'Titularprofessor' of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia in 1981; he was awarded the Großer Hessischer Kulturpreis in 1984, the Lovis Corinth Prize in 1986 and the Stefan-Lochner-Medal of the City of Cologne in 1990. Important exhibitions have been dedicated to the artist's work since the 1980s, for example the extensive retrospective exhibition in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Frankfurt and Saarbrücken in 1980/81 and the retrospective exhibition of his graphic work in the Albertina in Vienna and other museums in Germany in 1984. A large selection of his works toured to Cologne, Bologna and Budapest between 1994 and 1996. Schulze belonged to the last great names and precursors of German postwar-abstraction. He died in Cologne on 14 April, 20015 [DB].