Beschreibung:

Gerhard Richter Schatten 6 1968 Oil and graphite on canvas. 55.1 x 50.1cm. (21¾ x 19¾ in). Signed and dated 'Richter 68' on the reverse; titled 'Schatten 6' on the stretcher.
Provenance Anon. sale, Christie's New York, 8 May 1997, lot 229; Private collection, London Literature Angelika Thill, Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné, 1962-1993, Ostfildern-Ruit 1993, no. 209-11, n.p. (illustrated) Catalogue Essay In Schatten 6 (Shadow 6), Gerhard Richter plays with the notions of figuration and abstraction.This early work, clearly influenced by photography- a medium that had drastically transformed his art in 1962 when he transferred a photo of Bridget Bardot onto canvas intentionally blurring the image-depicts the two adjoining edges of a picture frame and the shadow they cast onto a combination of floor and wall. Responding to the emerging Conceptual and Minimalist movements, Richter, universally acknowledged as the father of contemporary painting, playfully reasserts his medium's dominance. Part of a group of approximately 20 paintings executed between 1967 and 1968 and collectively known as the Shadow paintings, Schatten 6 is a prime example of the artist's ongoing fascination with the tension between reality and the actuality of painting. "I was surprised by photography, which we all use so massively every day. Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional criteria I had always associated with art. It had no style, no composition, no judgment. It freed me from personal experience. For the first time, there was nothing to it: it was a picture.That's why I wanted to have it, to show it- not use it as a means to painting, but use painting as a means to photography." (Gerhard Richter as quoted in M. Kimmelman,Gerhard Richter An Artist Beyond Isms,' NewYork Times, 27 January, 2002) Read More Artist Bio Gerhard Richter German • 1932 Powerhouse painter Gerhard Richter has been a key player in defining the formal and ideological agenda for painting in contemporary art. His instantaneously recognizable canvases literally and figuratively blur the lines of representation and abstraction. Uninterested in classification, Richter skates between unorthodoxy and realism, much to the delight of institutions and the market alike. Richter's color palette of potent hues is all substance and "no style," in the artist's own words. From career start in 1962, Richter developed both his photorealist and abstracted languages side-by-side, producing voraciously and evolving his artistic style in short intervals. Richter's illusory paintings find themselves on the walls of the world's most revered museums—for instance, London’s Tate Modern displays the Cage (1) – (6), 2006 paintings that were named after experimental composer John Cage and that inspired the balletic 'Rambert Event' hosted by Phillips Berkeley Square in 2016. View More Works