"Foto von einem Bild, Halifax 1978"

113/128

gelatin silver print, oil-based paint

signed, numbered and dated (ink) on verso

In the summer of 1978 Gerhard Richter photographed the surface of an oil sketch on canvas (78x52 cm, 1978 - the work had previously been shown in the exhibition "Pictures" in the Anna Leonowen's Gallery of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design). The photographs were taken from several sides, from different angles and distances and under different lighting conditions. The photographic results have been organized in two ways: On the one hand, as a successive series, in book form. On the other hand in a version that is presented pictorially in grid form. (see Gerhard Richter 1979)

On the occasion of the exhibition of his Halifax drawings in the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld in May 1997, Richter experienced a reunion with the photographic works he took in 1978. He summarized them in the same year in eight panels of four pictures in four rows as 128 details of one picture. For a renewed publication of the pictures in book form, Richter dealt with the photos once more, had them printed again and defined new details until this work was completed in an autonomous book (cf. S-1286) in the summer of 1998.
(Fritz Simak, 2011)