German painter, draughtsman and sculptor, born on 31 May 1915 in Schneidemühl (now Piła, Poland), died on 14 April 2005 in Cologne.
Life
Bernard Schultze grew up in Berlin, where from 1934 to 1939 he studied at the Hochschule für Kunsterziehung, notably under Willy Jaeckel, before attending the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. Called up, he fought in Russia and Africa; all his earlier works were lost in the bombing of Berlin in 1944. After two years as a refugee in Flensburg, he settled in Frankfurt in 1947.
In 1949 he met the painter Ursula Bluhm, whom he married in 1955; under the name Ursula, she was to share his studio for almost fifty years. A first stay in Paris in 1951, where he discovered André Masson, Wols and Jean-Paul Riopelle, proved decisive: he painted his first Informel canvases. In December 1952, in Frankfurt, he founded the Quadriga group with Karl Otto Götz, Otto Greis and Heinz Kreutz.
The Galerie Daniel Cordier exhibited him in Paris in 1958 and 1962. In 1964 he installed a room of Migofs at documenta III in Kassel. He received the art prize of the City of Cologne (1969), joined the Academy of Arts in Berlin (1972) and won the Lovis Corinth Prize (1986). A major retrospective toured Germany in 1980 and 1981. From 1995 he divided his time between Paris and Cologne.
The work
At first gestural and Informel, nourished by André Breton’s interest in the unconscious, his painting took on relief: plastic elements from 1954, straw, rags and string around 1957. The works then left the stretcher and hung from frameworks of wire mesh or branches. From 1961 came the “Migofs”, assemblages and collages which he later developed in bronze and in coloured plastic figures.
The 1970s brought oils and watercolours with zoomorphic figures and pastel-toned landscapes; the 1980s and 1990s, very large canvases (up to 15 m²), the “tabuskri” (1991), bronzes and etchings. The painted sculptures and mobiles shown at Chaumont-sur-Loire in 2023 play on fluorescent greens, oranges, reds and blues.
Exhibitions and collections
- Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Tate (London), Museum of Modern Art (New York); Villa Hammerschmidt (Bonn).
- Works on paper, Albertina, Vienna, 1984.
- Painted sculptures and mobiles, 2023 art season of the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire.
- The Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles 25th anniversary exhibition, 22 May to 19 June 2026, with a Sans titre (1957, mixed media on paper laid down on canvas, 42 x 60 cm, reproduced in B. Schultze, Hirmer, 1991, p. 246).