And You?

Middendorf was born in 1953 in Dinklage. From 1973 to 1979 he studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin with Karl Horst Hödicke. At Hödicke's urging, Middendorf began in the late 1970s with a representational, emphatically painterly style of design. In 1977, together with Hödicke's students Rainer Fetting, Salomé and Bernd Zimmer, he was involved in the founding of Galerie am Moritzplatz in Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1979, Middendorf became a lecturer in experimental cinema at the Berlin University of the Arts. Alongside painting, he had already worked in detail with this medium during his studies. Together with Fetting, Salomé and Zimmer, he became known to the general public with the group exhibition "Violent Painting", which took place at the beginning of 1980 at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin. In 1980 he went to New York on a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service. His works created there are characterized by a greater emotional serenity. Through a reduction of colour and a turn to new themes, he finds his way back to an experimental opening.