Gerhard Richter - Frau mit Kind - image-1

Lot 653 R

Gerhard Richter - Frau mit Kind

Auction 1135 - overview Cologne
01.06.2019, 14:00 - Contemporary Art
Estimate: 60.000 € - 80.000 €
Result: 80.600 € (incl. premium)

Gerhard Richter

Frau mit Kind
2005

Frequency modulated offset print on card. 155 x 130 cm. Frame dimension 159.5 x 134.5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed, dated, and numbered. Numbered 3/32 (+8 A.P.). Edition Joseph Heni, G.F., London (label verso).

The edition was framed according to the artist's specifications.

The basis for this offset edition is the painting 'Frau mit Kind (Strand)' [Woman with Child (Beach)], which Gerhard Richter created in 1965, adapted from an illustration from a magazine.
The motif thus originates from the famous group of works of the painted Photo-Paintings, which Richter created in the 1960s based on photographs from print media and photo albums. Photographic documents of current political events stand alongside nostalgic motifs from adverts, private family portraits, and images of banal everyday objects. Their special charm results from the fact that the motifs, for the most part seemingly trivial, are based on a further semantic level, which often only becomes apparent when the concrete origin of the source of the picture is deduced. Thus, when viewing 'Woman with Child', one cannot say whether the photographic model was taken from a magazine or a family album, whether it has a documentary, advertising or private character. In addition, the pictorial means of blurring distorts the depiction. Richter used this as a means of alienation and distortion to illustrate the distance between reality and its only seemingly objective photographic replica.
The distance to reality is further intensified in this offset print: the painting, which was painted based on a photographic print, is in turn photomechanically reproduced. 'I can best define reality through my own attitude to reality and that has something to do with blurredness, insecurity, volatility, partiality, or whatever.' (Gerhard Richter, quoted in: Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter. Catalogue raisonné Volume 1, Ostfildern 2011, p.28).

NB

Catalogue Raisonné

Butin 130

Provenance

private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia