Lot 519 D

The present work from 1964 belongs to the earliest works in which Gerhard Richter explored the motif of the curtain. A total of twelve works on this subject were made between 1964 and 1967, which, with the juxtaposition of light and dark stripes, suggest, rather than depict the image of curtain. The theme of the painted curtains points to the discourse of the medium of painting as a window onto a feigned reality, also reflected in terms of motif in his window and cloud pictures.
The 1960s was a stylistically formative decade for Gerhard Richter, in which the fundamental themes and techniques in his oeuvre unfold. One decisive development can be traced back to the curtain pictures as these significantly sketch his handling of the photographic medium. ''Within Richter's painterly concept for the photo-picture, they build a decisive variation and thematic expansion. Although they show a photographic illusionism and capture the grey of the black-and-white photography, they are the first examples of works created without direct templates. He was inspired to the motif by the curtain in the sixfold portrait of Schmela from 1964. In 1972 Richter supposedly asserted in an interview that he was not interested in copying photographs, but producing photographs with the means of painting. The curtains fulfil this aspiration more than all the other pictures. Because a photographic template does not exist here, a comparison between painting and photography is not at all possible''. (Dietmar Elger (ed.), Gerhard Richter, Maler, Cologne 2002, p.188).