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Auction archive: Lot number 12

Gerhard Richter

Estimate
US$1,500,000 - US$2,000,000
Price realised:
US$4,095,000
Auction archive: Lot number 12

Gerhard Richter

Estimate
US$1,500,000 - US$2,000,000
Price realised:
US$4,095,000
Beschreibung:

Gerhard Richter Follow Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape) signed and dated "Richter VII.66" on the reverse oil on canvas 42 1/2 x 44 1/2 in. (108 x 113 cm.) Painted in 1966.
Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery / Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, New York Günter Ulbricht Collection, Dusseldorf Collection Bernd F. Lunkewitz, Berlin (acquired from the above in the 1980s) Christie's, London, October 16, 2009, lot 13 Private Collection, Europe Exhibited New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery / Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, Gerhard Richter Paintings 1964-1974 , December 13, 1986 – January 17, 1987, no. 167/2, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967) Literature Gerhard Richter , exh. cat., Gegenverkehr, Aachen, 1969, no. 45, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967) Gerhard Richter , exh. cat., XXXVI Biennale, Venice, 1972, no. 167/2, p. 68 (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967) Jürgen Harten, Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Paintings 1962-1985 , Cologne, 1986, no. 167/2, p. 154 (illustrated, p. 68, incorrectly dated 1967) Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, ed., Gerhard Richter Werkübersicht/Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1993, no. 167-2, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967) Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter Landscapes , 2011, p. 19 Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1968, vol. 1 (nos. 1 – 198) , Ostfildern, 2011, no. 167-2, p. 337 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay An early photo-painting by Gerhard Richter Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape), 1966, is among the first landscape paintings that the artist created in his career. Presenting a reinterpretation of the grand tradition of landscape painting in Romanticism, the work presents a sublime mountainous vista shrouded in heavy fog. Rendered in grisaille with the feathered brushwork synonymous with Richter’s blurred painterly idiom, Italienische Landschaft dissolves before our eyes into a flat field of subtle grey striations, pushing the figurative into the realm of abstraction. Painted in 1966, this majestic painting anticipates at once his large scale photo-paintings and abstract works, such as Vierwaldstätter See (Lake Lucerne), 1969, and his monochrome Graue Bilder (Grey Paintings) from the 1970s. While relatively few landscape paintings exist in Richter’s oeuvre, no other motif has preoccupied the artist for such a sustained duration as that of landscape. Richter painted his first landscape paintings in 1963, just one year after he conceived his very first photo-paintings. Having moved to Düsseldorf from the German Democratic Republic in 1961, Richter, bombarded by the visual onslaught of the Western economic miracle, sought to critically examine the “truth claim” of photography by making paintings based on photographs that he sourced from newspapers, books, and family albums. However, Richter later came to reassess his earlier statements on the criteria for choosing certain photographs, explaining in 1986 how the criterion was, “content, definitely—though I may have denied this at one time” (Gerhard Richter quoted in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “An Interview with Gerhard Richter”, 1986, October Files , no. 8, Cambridge, 2009, p. 13). Italienische Landschaft belongs to the group of early photo-paintings of faraway places that art historian Dietmar Elger specifically highlighted as exemplary for the dichotomy they presented “between the objectifiable distance generated by black and white painting and the artist’s personal interest in the motifs” (Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Landscapes , exh. cat., Sprengel Museum, Hannover, 1998, p. 19). As with Niagara Falls , 1964, or Sphinx von Gizeh, 1964, the present work portrays a landscape that Richter himself had never visited; he would tellingly only go on his first holiday abroad in 1968. Based on found photographs, these works collectively convey the middle-class desire for faraway holidays, and the implied economic independence. With Italienische Landschaft, Richter subversively resuscitates the genre of landscape painting that was deemed outdated in the contemporary art context of the 1960s. While its sublime vista recalls those of Romantic painter Casper David Fri

Auction archive: Lot number 12
Auction:
Datum:
17 May 2018
Auction house:
Phillips
New York
Beschreibung:

Gerhard Richter Follow Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape) signed and dated "Richter VII.66" on the reverse oil on canvas 42 1/2 x 44 1/2 in. (108 x 113 cm.) Painted in 1966.
Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery / Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, New York Günter Ulbricht Collection, Dusseldorf Collection Bernd F. Lunkewitz, Berlin (acquired from the above in the 1980s) Christie's, London, October 16, 2009, lot 13 Private Collection, Europe Exhibited New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery / Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, Gerhard Richter Paintings 1964-1974 , December 13, 1986 – January 17, 1987, no. 167/2, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967) Literature Gerhard Richter , exh. cat., Gegenverkehr, Aachen, 1969, no. 45, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967) Gerhard Richter , exh. cat., XXXVI Biennale, Venice, 1972, no. 167/2, p. 68 (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967) Jürgen Harten, Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Paintings 1962-1985 , Cologne, 1986, no. 167/2, p. 154 (illustrated, p. 68, incorrectly dated 1967) Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, ed., Gerhard Richter Werkübersicht/Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1993, no. 167-2, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967) Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter Landscapes , 2011, p. 19 Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1968, vol. 1 (nos. 1 – 198) , Ostfildern, 2011, no. 167-2, p. 337 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay An early photo-painting by Gerhard Richter Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape), 1966, is among the first landscape paintings that the artist created in his career. Presenting a reinterpretation of the grand tradition of landscape painting in Romanticism, the work presents a sublime mountainous vista shrouded in heavy fog. Rendered in grisaille with the feathered brushwork synonymous with Richter’s blurred painterly idiom, Italienische Landschaft dissolves before our eyes into a flat field of subtle grey striations, pushing the figurative into the realm of abstraction. Painted in 1966, this majestic painting anticipates at once his large scale photo-paintings and abstract works, such as Vierwaldstätter See (Lake Lucerne), 1969, and his monochrome Graue Bilder (Grey Paintings) from the 1970s. While relatively few landscape paintings exist in Richter’s oeuvre, no other motif has preoccupied the artist for such a sustained duration as that of landscape. Richter painted his first landscape paintings in 1963, just one year after he conceived his very first photo-paintings. Having moved to Düsseldorf from the German Democratic Republic in 1961, Richter, bombarded by the visual onslaught of the Western economic miracle, sought to critically examine the “truth claim” of photography by making paintings based on photographs that he sourced from newspapers, books, and family albums. However, Richter later came to reassess his earlier statements on the criteria for choosing certain photographs, explaining in 1986 how the criterion was, “content, definitely—though I may have denied this at one time” (Gerhard Richter quoted in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “An Interview with Gerhard Richter”, 1986, October Files , no. 8, Cambridge, 2009, p. 13). Italienische Landschaft belongs to the group of early photo-paintings of faraway places that art historian Dietmar Elger specifically highlighted as exemplary for the dichotomy they presented “between the objectifiable distance generated by black and white painting and the artist’s personal interest in the motifs” (Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Landscapes , exh. cat., Sprengel Museum, Hannover, 1998, p. 19). As with Niagara Falls , 1964, or Sphinx von Gizeh, 1964, the present work portrays a landscape that Richter himself had never visited; he would tellingly only go on his first holiday abroad in 1968. Based on found photographs, these works collectively convey the middle-class desire for faraway holidays, and the implied economic independence. With Italienische Landschaft, Richter subversively resuscitates the genre of landscape painting that was deemed outdated in the contemporary art context of the 1960s. While its sublime vista recalls those of Romantic painter Casper David Fri

Auction archive: Lot number 12
Auction:
Datum:
17 May 2018
Auction house:
Phillips
New York
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