Gagosian Shop Now: Richter Titian

a fullscale facsimile of gerhard richter's blurry painting after titian's annunciation has the angel in red robes levitating on the left side of the composition, while a kneeling mary in darker robes, illuminated by a beam of light from the upper left to her forehead, is on the lower right. there is a small shadow along the bottom edge which indicates this is a plexi mounted print, flat and glossy, not a painting. anyway, this one sold at koller in zurich, but larry gagosian has another one in his shop — Gerhard Richter Facsimile Object Annunciation after Titian (P12). 2015, Diasec-mounted Giclée print on aluminum, 125.4 × 200.3 cm, ed. 27/50 [above] sold at Koller in Zurich in Nov 2025.

To have the kind of relationship with a dealer where they’re always looking out for things, and when something comes up they know you’ll love, they just email it to you, is a wonderful thing.

So thanks, Larry, for the invite to “explore a selection of newly available prints and limited editions online,” and for the heads up on what you must know is my absolute favorite Gerhard Richter Facsimile Object—at least in my top two*. Since another of the edition sold in the fall for like half the shop’s asking price of $69,000 [nice], I think I will not shop now, but definitely thx for lmk.

Gerhard Richter, Annunciation after Titian Print, 2015, ed. 21/50 +3 AP, $69,000 [gagosianshop]
Lot 3694, 27 Nov 2025, Gerhard Richter, Annunciation after Titian (P12), 2015, ed. 27/50, sold for CHF 37,500 [kollerauctionen.ch]
Previously, related: 946-3 is the new 724-4
I Shall Call Him Heni-Me

*It’s ~~probably~~ been said before, but I really do love the OG Facsimile Object CR 724-4 (P1), 2014, from the Beyeler, which replicates one of Richter’s own favorite squeegee paintings from 1990.

a plexi face mounted photo of a gerhard richter squeegee painting is horizontal in orientation, with passages of red and yellow on white and blue in the corners. the red pkaes some sections feel pink. richter likes this painting best i guess because he used it for a ton of other works — Gerhard Richter Facsimile Object, 724-4 (P1), 2014, Diasec on aluminum, 92 x 126 cm, ed. 174/500, sold at Karl & Faber in Munich in December 2025

I have to say I also like P1’s antecedents, the 2008 photo editions of CR 724-4 which Richter also made with Joe Hage’s HENI. I can’t tell if Richter was exploring how to mount his out-of-focus photo of 724-4, whether in a frame like a photo, or on Diasec like an object, or that he just liked them both. I guess if he didn’t like one, he wouldn’t have published it, so the variation must be what interested him.

a plexi mounted photo of a gerhard richter squeegee painting is out of focus, so all the red and white and yellow and pink and blue squeegee marks and zones are fuzzy. — Gerhard Richter, Sieben Zwei Vier (Butin 133a), 2008, C-print facemounted on plexi on aluminum, 73 x 100 cm, ed. 32+8AP, this example via Sies & Höke

For my part, I wish he’d made them the full scale of the painting. Unless. What if the difference in dimension is encoded in the focal length? And these two editions, Sieben Zwei Vier (Butin 133a), above, and Seven Two Four (Butin 133b) are 73 x 100 cm because Richter moved his camera 21% further away from the painting without changing the focus?

Gerhard Richter, Seven Two Four (Butin 133b), 2008, C-print in artist’s frame, 73 x 100 cm (print), 82 x 112 cm (framed), ed. 32+8AP, image via Ketterer Kunst, which sold this one in 2021

I might like this more now, and feel less urgent about making a full-scale facsimile object after all.

[next morning update] I can’t find any discussion of these editions, and no one in this overheating chaotic world on holiday has chimed in about the focal length. But the archived version of Joe Hage’s Richter website describes these two editions as “Colour photograph[s] based on an out-of-focus photograph of Abstract Painting [CR: 724-4] from 1990.” Which sounds like Richter was taking out-of-focus photos of his paintings after he made them. And which also makes some sense, because Richter didn’t own it; its original collector sold it at Christie’s in 2006, before all the replicating and adapting started.

a 1989 panel from gerhard richter's atlas has twelve black and white photos in three columns, all of a similar type: a snapshot of a group of white people around a table or room, except all these pictures are blurry and out of focus, as are more than a hundred other photos richter archived from the baader meinhof gang, which i assume were source or reference images for his october 17 1977 painting cycle. but which richter perhaps intentionally blurred as a strategy. via the internet archive's copy of gerhard-richter.com, which was summarily deleted by joe hage. — Gerhard Richter, Atlas [477], 1989, Baader-Meinhof photos that have to be rephotographed out of focus by Richter? Is there another explanation? I guess I need to look this up? [via]

Interestingly, or interesting if it’s related: there are ten panels in Atlas from 1989 [470-479] with out-of-focus photos of Baader Meinhof photos. The rest of Atlas at the time was crispy landscapes, so photos for paintings, but no photos of paintings.