Gerhard Richter: Sieben zwei vier

Gerhard Richter: Sieben zwei vier
RICHTER, GERHARD
1932 Dresden

Title: Sieben zwei vier.
Date: 2008.
Technique: C-Print between Plexiglass and aluminium Dibond.
Depiction Size: 73 x 100cm.
Notation: Signed and inscribed verso. Here additionally with edition label.
Publisher: Gerhard Richter Archiv, Dresden (publisher).
Number: 7/8 a.p.
Frame: Artist's frame. Not examined out of the frame.

This work is one of eight artist's proofs outside the edition of 32 copies.

The work is listed on the official internet site of the artist under Editionen (Editions). (www.gerhard-richter.com)

Provenance:
- Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia

Literature:
- Butin, Hubertus/Gronert, Stefan/Olbricht, Thomas (eds.): Gerhard Richter - Editions 1965-2013, Ostfildern 2014, cat. rais. no. 133a

- Based on the painting 'Abstract Picture' from 1990
- Through the strong blurring, Richter deliberately distinguishes the edition from painting and advances even further into abstraction
- The principle of blurring runs like a thread through Richter's oeuvre


The Principle of Uncertainty
The photo edition “Seven Two Four, ” produced in 2008, is based on the oil painting “Abstract Painting” from 1990, catalog number 724-4, from which the title of the edition is derived. Gerhard Richter photographs the painting with a strongly defocused camera lens, which demonstratively distinguishes the photographic work from the painting. The blurring covers the motif like a veil, thus removing it from our visual and cognitive grasp. Since the photograph was mounted between a Plexiglas and an aluminum plate and has no additional frame, the work has a distinctly object-like character.
The principle of blurring as a specific mode of representation runs like a thread through Gerhard Richter's oeuvre. Normally, we encounter the delicate dissolution of contours in his representational or figurative paintings. In the edition “Sieben Zwei Vier, ” however, it is an abstract, non-representational motif in which the autonomous color appears blurred and is thus itself abstracted.
Hubertus Butin


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Explanations to the Catalogue

Gerhard Richter
Germany
Abstraction
Capitalistic Realism
New Realism
Post-War Art
Photographs
2000s
Artist's frame. Not examined out of the frame
Abstract
Photography
C-print