Fotos Von Einem Bild Halifax II
Fotos Von Einem Bild Halifax II
Signed Print
Gerhard Richter
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102 x 66cm, Edition of 60, Lithograph
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Meaning & Analysis
Fotos Von Einem Bild Halifax II (1998) is a signed lithograph by internationally acclaimed German artist, Gerhard Richter. The artwork is based on 128 Photographs of a Picture, Richter’s 1978 work comprising 128 black and white photographs of the surface of his own painting. The photographed artwork is Halifax, a small abstract painting created by Richter in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1978.
Released in a limited edition of 50, the lithograph is strongly related to a moment of breakthrough in Richter’s career. The period of the early 1970s marks the artist’s recourse to the neutral tones as a way of manifesting his doubt in the possibility of knowing and representing reality. It wasn’t until 1978 that Richter began to create small abstract panels and employ geometric shapes in his paintings, gradually veering away from the reduced visual language of the famous Grey Paintings series. Although still simplistic and monochrome, Halifax photographed as part of 128 Photographs of a Picture displays Richter’s renewed interest in the problems of texture, materiality, and surface of the artwork.
Fotos Von Einem Bild Halifax II extends Richter’s inquiry into the relationship between photography and painting. The artwork can be seen to mediate the artist’s rebellion against the idea that photography and painting should be perceived as antithetical media, a view supported widely by the art education systems of Richter’s youth. Engaging with the painted surface as much as the pictures of it, Fotos Von Einem Bild Halifax II challenges our assumptions about the intersections between photography, painting, and abstraction.