Detlev Foth, an important painter between expressive figuration and abstraction, was born in 1959 in Münster in Westphalia. As a young man he worked together with Kurt Link, who worked as an artist in Dusseldorf. Detlev Foth studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1979 on. His teachers included Luise Kimme, Bernard Luthi, Siegfried Cremer, Tony Cragg, Walter Biemel and Rolf Sackville.

In his paintings, Detlev Foth is between abstract and figurative expressionism. With impasto, gestural brush strokes he locates his landscape paintings and architecture images in this border area. Although the paintings remain with a few exceptions representational, the motifs play with abstraction in different degrees therefore creating a tension between recognition and imagination in the viewer. His photographs and digitally enhanced collages sometimes cross over into the area of Surrealism.

Detlev Foth was still a student in 1981 when his first solo exhibition took place in Palma de Mallorca, with others to follow.

His works can be found at Heinrich-Heine-Institute,Düsseldorf, in the collection of Suhrkamp Verlag in Frankfurt am Main, at the University of Opole in Poland and in the Gallery International d'Art Contemporain in French Revin.

Detlev Foth lives and works in Dusseldorf.

Detlev Foth studied painting from 1979-85 at the Art Academy Dusseldorf among others Luise Kimme, Tony Cragg, Walter Biemel and Rolf Sackenheim.

He was the 1985 master student of Rissa (di Karin Götz).

He had numerous exhibitions of his expressive painting at home and abroad.