This one, which Marian Goodman held onto for a while, is now for sale, which is not as important as the view we now get of the back of painting. Richter painted it in—and on—the frame.
Gerhard Richter, Engelskopf (Angel’s Head) [CR 48-7], 1963, also 1963/65, oil on linen? 68 x 72 cm, image via Gerhard Richter
I swear I will cut back on Gerhard Richter stanposting when Richter cuts back on wild things to stan.
While looking for examples of the way Richter considers his catalogue raisonné as a construct separate from a chronology, this painting caught my eye. Engelskopf, or Angel’s Head, [CR 48-7], is dated to 1963, where it comes after CR 13, CR 14 and CR 25-a, and is followed by CR 14-a and CR 15.
That 1963 date makes Engelskopf is one of the earliest photopaintings, but also one of the very first to include a caption text, which made Richter’s sourcing of reproduced images clear. It’s also Richter’s first art historical reference; except for Philipp Wilhelm, a painting of a newspaper clipping of a painted portrait, from 1964, it’ll be a long time before Richter directly references earlier artworks.
The inauguration of Gerhard Richter BIRKENAU, a permanent exhibition in a purpose-built, VW-funded pavilion at the International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim, Poland, opened on 9 February 2024, the artist’s 92nd birthday. via mdsm.pl
Last month Gerhard Richter BIRKENAU, a permanent exhibition in a purpose-built pavilion, was opened at the International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim, the Polish town near the nazi death camp that took its name. It contains reproductions of the Sonderkommando photos that Richter used as a basis for the Birkenau series of large-scale squeegee paintings [CR 937/1-4] he made in 2014. [Two photos are visible on the concrete walls below.] It also includes full-scale Diasec-mounted versions of the Birkenau paintings [a medium Richter once used for a category he called “Facsimile Objects,” but which he later replaced with “Prints”]. And facing them are Facsimile Objects of a series of four Grey Mirror paintings. Photos of oil-on-glass paintings printed and Diasec face-mounted with acrylic on aluminum.
Mrs. Moritz-Richter, et al., at the inauguration of Gerhard Richter BIRKENAU, via mdsm.pl
In this Guardian article [shoutout greg.org hero/reader Claudio for the heads up] Agata Pyzik tries to put a market–or at least a marketing—critique on Richter’s use of photo copies of paintings, even while acknowledging his attempts to remove his Birkenau works from an art market context. [Richter’s kept the paintings in his foundation, and put the other facsimile edition in the Reichstag.]
Gerhard Richter, Grauer Spiegel (4 Parts) [CR 955], 2018, his last painting (so far), installed with Birkenau and Birkenau Facsimile Objects and Birkenau photos at the Met Breuer in 2020
I read the Birkenau facsimiles, which he has shown alongside the Birkenau paintings from the jump, including at the Met Breuer in 2020, as an attempt to head off any sacralization of the paintings themselves. He did not make them to be, and he does not want them to become icons of the Holocaust. Even worse for him, I think, would be being seen as attempting to iconize or exploit these terrible photographs, to turn them to his own use. He sees limits to his own project of painting in relation to images and history, and he’s not wrong.
Gerhard Richter, Grey Mirror [CR 751/1-4], 1991, each 300 x 175 cm., portrait-style, paint and enamel on glass, a gift of the artist to the Saint Louis Art Museum, with three giant squeegee diptychs, November, December & January, which the museum bought in 1990, visible in reflection.
But while all the media attention is on the Birkenau pictures, the most unsettling and powerful element of the installation, the mirrors, barely gets a mention. If this were any other work, any other place, any other time, the fact that Richter made Facsimile Objects of mirror paintings would be enough to keep me going for weeks. These happen to be facsimiles of Grey Mirror [CR 751/1-4], a series of 3 x 1.75 m, color-coated glass paintings made in 1991 for—and by—the St Louis Art Museum, a gift with purchase. [The purchase was Betty.] In Oświęcim, Richter has turned them sideways, and installed them landscape-style, as one continuous 12-meter mirror panorama.
But these are there, and now.
And so visitors to Oświęcim, while flanked on either side by direct photographic evidence of the nazi genocide at Birkenau as documented by its targets, will see reflections of themselves and everyone else with their backs turned to a repetition of Birkenau which looms behind them. It’s at least theoretically possible, if previously inconceivable, that if he opened an exhibition in Germany that made visitors look in a mirror while turning away from the evidence of genocide all around them, Richter could be arrested.
[update: After corresponding with the artist’s studio about broken links on the webpage for this exhibition, I was informed that this mirror work is actually an “exhibition copy” of Grauer Spiegel (4 Parts) [CR955], and not [CR751/1-4]. Which means the dimensions and material aspect of this object are still to be confirmed. For now the artist’s site still describes them as Diasec-mounted prints. Is that whan an exhibition copy of a mirror work is? Or would it be a similarly produced enamel paint on the back of glass? Perhaps we shall see.
Installation view of the Birkenau paintings and photos reflected in Grauer Spiegel (4 Parts) [CR955] at Gerhard Richter: 100 Works for Berlin, at the Neue Nationalgalerie thru 2026, a video still by Julius-Christian Schreiner via DW
What is significant, though, and has been unremarked by anyone, is that with these mirrors, the BIRKENAU installation replicates the current long-term installation of the Birkenau paintings, the Birkenau photos, and Grauer Spiegel (4 Parts) [CR955], at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. So viewers in Germany can, in fact, see themselves in a mirror, with the genocide of Birkenau represented behind and all around them, know that this same situation exists somewhere else right now, and contemplate the differences between an original and a repetition.]
Gerhard Richter, Grauer Spiegel, 2021, 40×34 cm, pigment on bicoloured glass, ed 100+20AP, image via David Zwirner
Happy belated birthday, Gerhard Richter, who is apparently too busy painting, drawing, and collaging to update his website. The Grauer Spiegel (2021, No. 179, pigment on glass, ed. 100+20AP), included in Richter’s current show at David Zwirner in London is not there. It looks like the pigment is actually on the recto of the glass, a depiction of a mirror, not a mirror itself. But that’s just how it’s photographed. Installed at the Points of Resistance IV: Skills for Peace exhibition at Zionskirche in Berlin in 2022, its mirror nature was on full view.
Vija Celmins | Gerhard Richter, Double Vision, exhibition catalogue from Kunsthalle Hamburg
Posting about underseen little grey Richters really brings out the underseen little grey Richters. In a conversation begun on bluesky, Michael Seiwert mentioned seeing several in a very interesting show last Summer at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Vija Celmins | Gerhard Richter, Double Vision, curated by Dr. Brigitte Kölle, is an intriguing Celmins show that is also a very rare two-artist Richter show.
Vija Celmins, Explosion at Sea, 1966, 13 1/2 x 23 1/2 in., oil on canvas, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago
I love the show’s idea of “juxtaposing such a strong female position with the work of Gerhard Richter, so often presented as a singular phenomenon,” not just to see his work “with a fresh eye,” but because it puts both of them in a larger, richer context. These artists clearly share interests, approaches, motifs, and even biographies, that felt unexpected at first, but feel obvious now.
Spread showing rough times at sea from Celmins | Richter, Double Vision exhibition catalogue
Some of the resonances between Celmins’ and Richter’s practices come immediately to mind: photo-based painting, found/everyday objects, seascapes, fighter planes, grey, they’re all in there. But browsing the catalogue, I was straight up surprised by the spread above, which features a 1963 Richter titled Schlachtshiff [Battleship], and a 1966 Celmins, Explosion at Sea.
Destroyed Richter Painting #02 (ship), 2012, 40 x 30 in., oil on canvas
That Richter, though, is one the artist destroyed in the mid-1960s. It was the first of the Destroyed Richter Paintings I had remade in China in 2012, after seeing a photo of it, from Richter’s Archive, in Spiegel. OK, technically, and explicitly to the point, I had Richter’s archival photo painted at the scale of the destroyed painting it depicted, and I have shown and lived with this picture. So it is wild to see it included in this discussion. As Jaboukie might have said if he’d ever posed as Richter on twitter, “Just because I destroyed it doesn’t mean I can’t miss it.” Obviously, I am buying the book immediately.
Gerhard Richter, Blattecke (Sheet Corner), 1967, offset print mounted on cardboard, 234 x 180 mm, ed. 555/739, sold at Christie’s UK in 2019
According to Section H1 of the conditions of sale [pdf], EU & UK buyers at online auctions conducted by Christie’s London have the right to cancel a sale within 14 days, IF the buyer is a consumer AND if the seller is NOT a consumer. This right is not available for lots sold by consumers. If the seller of a lot is a consumer, it will be stated, and/or the lot will be marked with the symbol, ∍.
But even if that weren’t the case, nothing says property of a consumer quite like the 555th example of a 1967 Gerhard Richter offset print published in an edition of 739, and which he subsequently declared to be open and unlimited.
This odd, thick, little 1979 Abstraktes Bild is not only a rare example of Richter painting on wood, it has the same dimensions as that odd, thick, little 1964 grey Abstraktes Bild from the other day.
When they sold it in 2017, Christie’s tried to make it sound like this visibly multi-layered painting was part of Richter’s squeegee development process. But I think that thick, tectonic red surface got crinkled by something else, like plastic wrap.
Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, CR-36-b, 1964, 14 x 10 in., oil and tape (?) on panel, image via gerhard-richter.com
David Rimanelli just posted this little Gerhard Richter painting on instagram, and I swear, I cannot figure out how I’ve never noticed it before.
It is just 14 x 10 inches, 35.7 x 25.5 cm, an oil on panel—the description on Richter’s website, and the Sotheby’s lot description from 2007 both say it is oil and tape on panel, but I really do think the absence of the tape is the point here.
Gerhard Richter porcelainware set, 1992, for Edition Obelisco of Cologne, this set of six placesettings sold at Stahl in Hamburg in 2016
While looking for something else, I stumbled across this set of porcelain dishes by Gerhard Richter. They were apparently produced in 1992—there’s a big RICHTER 92 signature baked onto the bottom of everything—by the Thuringian porcelainmaker Kahla as part of an Edition Obelisco series of artist-designed dishware.
So now I’ve got to resist being one more empty result in the little swirling eddy on Google linking Richter and Obelisco and nothing else. Other listings say Edition Obelisco was commissioned for the 1992 edition of Art Cologne, but the Hamburg auction house Stahl that sold these six 7-piece place settings (six chargers, plates, soup dishes, cake plates, cups & saucers, and mugs) in 2016 said it just debuted at what was once the most important art fair around.
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the blue brushstroke design of Richter’s dishes is apparently raised up from the white surface. The Gerhard Richter Archiv in Dresden, which has two place settings, reports that the planned edition of 500 sets was not realized because of production challenges. [From the various online images, maybe they had some trouble getting the blue right.]
this absolute mess of a plate by Walter Stöhrer didn’t sell last December. image: invaluable
Other artists in the Edition Obelisco series included a bunch of dudes—Michael Buthe, Alain Clement, Alan Jones, Emil Schumacher, Walter Stöhrer, Claude Viallat, and Wolf Vostell—and Isa Genzken, then still married to Richter. Out of all that, only one awful plate turns up online. Unless Vostell’s dishes are all encased in blocks of concrete, the only other one I want to see is Genzken’s. This whole project feels like a reunification euphoria fantasy that didn’t work out.
Lot 115: Gerhard Richter, 4096 Farben, 1974, enamel on canvas, 100×100 in., image via Sotheby’s
Life-sized portraits of lap-sized, wide-eyed poodles aren’t the only thing Sotheby’s is selling tomorrow. It’s also selling one of Gerhard Richter’s greatest paintings, 4096 Farben, CR-359, (1974). The 64×64 grid of 1024 different colors, each painted somewhere four times, is sort of a capstone of Richter’s color chart project. At least until the Köln cathedral windows, of course. And those are not for sale.
The last something: Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild (CR 952-4), 2017, 200x250cm, image:gerhard-richter.com
I get it, it’s been six years since Gerhard Richter announced he’d “retired from painting,” but after several months of press releases and invites for a show of “new and recent” work, it still came as a shock to read David Zwirner describing the show opening last night as containing “a group of Richter’s last paintings, made in 2016–2017.”
Gerhard Richter painting in Gerhard Richter Painting, 2011, image from Corinna Belz’ film
Of course, what it technically means is, “last paintings on canvas.” Or “last squeegee paintings.” Which still shocks to think about; I, for one, would like him to still be painting. But given the artist’s incredible physical exertion while making the squeegee paintings in Corinna Belz’ 2011 film, Gerhard Richter Painting, it’s understandable. I’m still trying to think through what to make of it, though, and to see what Richter’s making now.
This painting, Mathis, from 1983, strikes me as a very good transitional painting, and was recognized as such by a serious collector who kept it for decades. That did not, apparently, drive interest to the level Phillips had estimated, and so all the work of contextualizing this painting was at risk of being lost, or at least under-appreciated. Not now though.
In 1989 Gerhard Richter made four large, slush-colored squeegee paintings [CR 706-1 through 4], which he titled Eis/Ice. In 1997, the Lannan Foundation helped give the brightest one, Eis 2, to the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2003, Richter made a quarter-sized (100 x 80 cm) print edition of Eis 2 for the 40th anniversary of Lincoln Center Editions, a print fundraising operation of the Vera List Art Project. Richter and Robert Blanton’s print studio Brand X created an amazing 41-color screenprint version of the painting, just the kind of medium shifting challenge those guys would love.
Gerhard Richter, Eis 2 poster, 113 x 87 cm sheet of Somerset, unsigned, but still an edition
Clearly it worked, because Richter put out Eis 2 as a signed edition of 108 (plus 27 proofs) on Somerset. They started popping at auction about three years ago, and in the last year have sold for $56-$90,000.
Brand X also printed 500 copies of an unsigned poster version on slightly taller, narrower Somerset, with the Lincoln Center/List Art Posters caption. Same image dimensions (40 x 32 in.), same screens. These ur-Facsimile Objects sell for just a couple thousand dollars.
A print of a Richter painting signed by Richter, for sale at Van Ham for a proposed EUR12-18,000
What is this? The Cologne auction house Van Ham says it is a Gerhard Richter. Kerze is an offset print on aludibond and face-mounted with diasec, so it is produced like a Facsimile Object. But it is signed on the front. There is no CR information, or even a date, but it is described as a benefit edition created for fiftyfifty in Dusseldorf. I vaguely remember that. Sure enough, in 2012, Richter donated 36 signed works to raise EUR300,000 for the homeless support organisation, including both this candle picture and Betty, his iconic portrait of his daughter.
None of these objects appear on the artist’s website, however, and the online gallery is long gone. Except for one snapshot in the Internet Archive. The list includes half a dozen signed posters, and one page from a catalogue, all face-mounted on UV diasec; a leftover signed print from 20,280, a newspaper edition Richter made in the Rheinische Post in 2010; and 5 or 10 copies each of six “Offset Edition (2011) from Tate Modern,” including Kerze, but also Betty, 4.096 Colours, and 100x100cm prints of two of the Cage paintings (4 & 5) that are the stars of Tate’s Richter offering. They sound like gift shop souvenirs, but signed.
Gerhard Richter’s Cage Grid I (2011), an edition of 16 giclée prints that were sold either together or separately at the Tate Modern during Panorama
Of course, that distinction is not so clear cut. Richter made a full-size giclée grid edition of Cage 1, which was also for sale at the Tate’s shop during his 2011 retrospective, Panorama. This all feels like the genesis of Richter’s Facsimile Object project, the experimental soup of form, editioning, signing, and auratic status–and from the artist’s perspective, at least, these fiftyfifty pieces are on the other, autographed side of the work/non-work line. And yet the quasi-canonization of the facsimile objects, and their proliferation in the market, help to make that line less relevant with every passing year.
While the discourse grapples with the nuances of the relationship between the digital art object vs its token of ownership, the old art world is not letting the concept of authenticity rest.
Why, just yesterday, this object appeared for sale online at Christie’s Amsterdam. It is “an unsigned trial proof [sic]” of Gerhard Richter’s 1990 edition, Besetztes Haus (Squatters’ House), based on a similarly titled 1989 painting that depicts a then-well-known squat near the artist’s studio in Cologne.
The actual work, an offset print on 65x80cm card, was issued in an edition of rather specific composition, as the artist’s website documents it:
100 copies, signed in pencil, dated at bottom right, numbered at bottom left. 10 copies, signed in pencil, dated at bottom right, numbered in Roman numerals at bottom left. 10 trial proofs, signed in pencil, dated at bottom right, marked at bottom left: Probedruck or Druckprobe. 1 trial proof, signed in pencil, dated and marked on the image at top left: Druckprobe. 5 artist’s proofs, signed in pencil, dated at bottom right, marked at bottom right: a.p.
This sheet of paper, 49×70.5cm in size and still bearing the color bars and crop marks of the printer, is labeled on the side in an unidentified hand with “GardaPat 13” and “Farbe Fox Glanz,” references to paper and ink specs.
The “lot essay” is a single sentence: “We thank Hubertus Butin for the information he has kindly provided on this work.” What is that information? Did the editor of the Richter Editions catalogue raisonnée say that for an artist who painted color charts, and who deliberately uses commercial-grade printing methods, a salvaged print sample is as conceptually valid as an actually signed printer’s proof, for a third the price? Or that sure, why not, do you remember that one sheet from Dresden? Who knows? But apparently it is enough to know Butin’s seen this thing, because it already has a bid, and will sell for at least EUR3,000, plus fees.
That one sheet from Dresden, but even that was signed, yo
Plus, of course, the Artists’ Resale Right royalty. If Richter accepts the 4% royalty for the sale of this work material scavenged from the printer’s floor, does that mean he recognizes it as an authentic work? Or will the real authentication only come if Richter adds the result to the sales tab on his site?
