Firenze
Firenze
Signed Mixed Media
Gerhard Richter
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Medium: Mixed Media
Edition size: 99
Year: 2000
Size: H 12cm x W 12cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Mixed Media
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Meaning & Analysis
Firenze is a signed mixed media artwork created by internationally acclaimed German artist, Gerhard Richter. Released in a limited edition of 99 for the book Gerhard Richter: City Life, Firenze captures the artist’s innovative way of thinking about the modern media, texture, and materiality of the artwork.
A photograph taken by Richter in 1999 on the banks of the river Arno has been overlaid with a dense layer of mixed oil paint. The view of the river blends with the torrent of vibrant colours on the left side of the artwork, rendering the city captivatingly oneiric. Richter intervenes in the colours of the photograph, depicting the river in bright shades of yellow, which intensifies the dreamlike quality of the picture.
The striking intermingling of oil paint and the photographic image represents one of the artist's most recognizable techniques. The practice of overpainting has been key to Richter’s works ever since he started to experiment with the medium of photography. The Museum Visit series (2011) saw the artist covering 234 photographs with soft layers of white paint in an attempt to problematize the modern notion of representation. The artist commented in the context of overpainting: “Painting always has reality: you can touch the paint; it has presence; but it always yields a picture”.