Signed, titled and dated on the verso, upper left.
Cracks and dust accumulation in places due to aging.

Helmut MIDDENDORF (1953–), known as a central figure of the Neue Wilde (New Fauves) movement that emerged in West Germany in the 1980s, was born in Dinklage in north-western Germany. From 1973 to 1979 he studied at the Berlin University of the Arts under Karl Horst HÖDICKE, known as the father of Berlin Neo-Expressionism, and while still a student in 1977 he founded the self-run Galerie am Moritzplatz together with Rainer FETTING, SALOMÉ and Bernd ZIMMER. This gallery, which advocated the revival of painting in reaction to the austerity of Conceptual Art, became a catalyst for the Neue Wilde movement. MIDDENDORF first attracted widespread attention through the group exhibition Heftige Malerei (Fierce Painting), held at Haus am Waldsee in Berlin in 1980. He established an international reputation for his vivid, expressive depictions of the convulsive movements of dancers and rock musicians at the Kreuzberg club SO36, transforming these figures into contemporary icons. In 1984, his work was included in An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture at MoMA. His works are held in major museums across Europe and the United States, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.

Painted in 1984, Frommlet is a large-scale oil painting measuring 230 × 180 cm that captures the shifting nature of contemporary life as reflected in Berlin's nocturnal culture. From the deep ultramarine darkness, a body in red and yellow rises, its arms raised high as if about to strike a drum. The red points of light scattered across the upper part of the canvas and the yellow band running diagonally across it evoke stage lighting. As the heat of red and yellow collides with the cool blue darkness, the contours of the figure gradually dissolve into colour and the movement of the brush. The trails of paint left to run down the canvas convey the movement of the artist's own body. What emerges is not an individual portrait, but the trace of a body that exists beyond name and time. Set against a night culture that has inherited the liminal space traditionally associated with festivity, the body emerging from the ultramarine night calls forth a sense of vital human nature within the viewer.

Hasegawa Museum, Shizuoka