Opening December 2 at the ICA MIAMI, Andreas Schulze: Special marks the German artist’s first U.S. museum survey. Curated by Alex Gartenfeld and Amanda Morgan, the exhibition spans more than four decades of Schulze’s practice. Blending abstraction and figuration, Schulze transforms the everyday into playful, introspective worlds rich with color, wit, and painterly depth.
Andreas Schulze, “Untitled (Garden),” 2016, acrylic on nettle cloth, 67 x 228 3/8 inches (2 parts).
© Andreas Schulze / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers. Photo by Timo Ohler.
WHITEWALL: Your paintings often blur the line between abstraction and figuration, imbuing ordinary objects with surreal humor. How do you decide when a form should remain recognizable versus dissolve into something entirely imagined?
ANDREAS SCHULZE: For me, abstraction and figuration are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, you can’t separate one from the other. I also see abstraction as a form of realism. When Ernst Ludwig Kirchner paints a hat feather, it is simply a semicircle, a stylized form, but one that is very concrete.
I like to combine the abstract and the figurative, and as a painter, I get to decide how to do so each time. The washing machine in Untitled (Giotto 80), 2023, is painted very realistically, while the furniture is partly imagined with references to Memphis design. A chest of drawers that looks like a hotel in Dubai; the blue background that reminds me of Giotto; Memphis from the 1980s—the latter both from Italy—hence “Giotto 80.”
This is a chain of associations that is logical and understandable to me. The viewer may not understand these combinations, but for me, it’s quite normal for things to mix. This complexity feels natural.
Another example: I painted the portraits of the Urbinos because I liked Piero della Francesca’s famous double portrait so much and would have liked to hang it in my own home. Of course, that’s not possible, so I wanted to paint something similar and make it my own, but not as a one-to-one copy. My version is both figurative and abstract. Figurative because they are portraits, but also abstract because they consist of spirals. The repetition and clear form have something very basic, but at the same time, they are complex because the individual forms merge into larger ones— the faces.
Painting an Ideal World with Andreas Schulze
Andreas Schulze, “Untitled (Self-portrait),” 2002, acrylic on nettle cloth, 86 5/8 x 137 7/8 inches (2 parts). © Andreas Schulze / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers. Photo by Timo Ohler.
WW: “Special” spans more than four decades of your work, from domestic interiors to anthropomorphic landscapes and cars. What connects these motifs across time, and how do you see your relationship to the everyday evolving through them?
AS: Basically, all these motifs are related to classic genres of painting: portrait, landscape, interior, exterior.
Every artist deals with the things that surround him or her. The things I paint all come from my surroundings. I don’t have any particular theme. People often use the terms “domesticity” or “domestic” to describe my work. That’s too narrow and too conventional. My idea of everyday life draws from the facets of our lives, and I have the opportunity to choose the motifs as I like. There are things that existed forty years ago and still exist today. Then there are new things. The connection between the motifs is created by me, through my perspective.
In my choice of motifs and how I paint them, a longing for an ideal world is certainly evident. The painterly beauty of Otto Dix’s match seller with a wooden leg and dachshund is always closer to my heart than Käthe Kollwitz’s painful, heavy charcoal drawings. I don’t focus on the suffering of the world in my work. It’s about art and what is expected of art.
“I don’t focus on the suffering of the world in my work. It’s about art,”
-Andreas Schulze
WW: The exhibition’s theatrical scenes and hybrid landscapes seem to invite viewers into a kind of stage of consciousness. What role does narrative—or anti-narrative—play in how you compose these environments?
AS: The idea of a stage is a recurring motif in my work. For example, there is a recent work, Untitled (Théâtre Sans Souci), 2022, in which a classic wooden-paneled room opens up onto a stage with an abstract figure that is either leaving or entering the space.
An earlier work, Untitled, 1982, shows a staircase in the center of the painting and a blue background. I wanted to create a stage for a performance. Festive decorative elements hang down from above. The setting is open, the blue background is reminiscent of an outdoor area, while the stage and decorations suggest an interior space.
The stage is like a symbol for painting itself. The place of display, of representation and narrative. These are essential characteristics of painting. That is what it is all about. However, each viewer develops their own story with the work.
Pictorial space is an important part of this narrative, this representation, and this idea of painting. The viewer can enter it in various ways. The pictorial space is part of the motif itself—in every painting, but particularly evident in the stage paintings and landscapes.
However, I also extend the pictorial space into the third dimension. This can be seen in the installation of the pipe paintings, which extend across the walls. Here, the space is defined by the paintings themselves.
Another idea of pictorial space can be found in the first room of the exhibition, where the walls are painted in a red hue. They transform the whole room into a pictorial space in which the two free-standing lamp sculptures serve as viewers or the audience.
Andreas Schulze, “Untitled (Rombo Duemila),” 1998, acrylic on nettle cloth, 63 x 181 inches (2 parts). © Andreas Schulze / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers. Photo by Timo Ohler.
WW: You emerged in 1980s Cologne amid the rise of neo-expressionism, yet you forged a singular path outside that movement. Looking back, how did that context shape your approach to color, humor, and painterly freedom?
AS: To respond to your repeated reference to humor in my work: Yes, humor makes many things more bearable, including the art world. Certainly, there is often a humorous undertone in my work, which also helps to create a certain distance from things. But that is not the intention of my paintings. I am not trying to illustrate jokes.
My relationship with the “Junge Wilde” certainly influenced my way of painting. As a young artist, I was naturally still unsure of how my work would be received. And then there were my colleagues and friends who had already found their own style and were quite successful with it. But even back then, I was very aware that in order to be noticed, I had to offer something different: in form, color, and in my approach to the canvas. This worked in part through a process of elimination. As a beginner, you don’t know where the journey will take you. Fifty years later, I can say that I did the right thing.
WW: Humor and melancholy coexist in much of your work—the exhaust of a car becomes a painterly gesture, a lamp hints at a body. What do you hope viewers will feel or question about themselves when encountering these strange yet familiar worlds?
AS: The great advantage of painting is that it allows you to mix things that have nothing to do with each other in reality. The resulting ambiguity in form and content leaves room for interpretation, but in a precise way. I hope people enjoy the exhibition. Painting should be enjoyable, which is not incompatible with it also having a deeper meaning. When you enjoy something, you look at it more closely, which opens the door to deeper reflection. When that happens, I am more than happy.
What to Know
Andreas Schulze, “Untitled,” 1982, acrylic on nettle cloth, 106 1/4 x 130 inches (2 parts). © Andreas Schulze / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers. Photo by Ingo Knies.
Don’t Miss
Untitled (Self-portrait) (2002), Untitled (Théâtre Sans Souci) (2022), and early works from the 1980s Cologne scene.
Why It Matters
Blurring abstraction and figuration, Schulze transforms everyday objects into dreamlike compositions that question perception, reality, and the painter’s role in shaping both.
Dates
December 2, 2025–March 15, 2026.
Venue
ICA Miami.
Curators
Alex Gartenfeld and Amanda Morgan.
