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Gerhard Richter
Mao, 2019
Archival fine art print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Duo 276 g 100% cotton paper, Diasec matt 2mm on 1mm aluminium, 29,7 x 23 cm, framed
Number XIX of XXX copies (VI AP, IV PP), signed und dated „Richter, 2019“ verso, titled „Mao“ and numbered roman verso
Catalogue Raisonne Editions Butin Nr. 175 (1)
Gerhard Richter’s “48 Portraits” are among the canonical works of West German post-war art. The portrait series, now owned by the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, was the focus of Richter’s exhibition in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1972. When Heinrich Miess began collecting material on the “48 Portraits” at the beginning of the 2000s, he did not do so to add another to the art historical exegeses of Richter’s work. Since the 1980s, Heinrich Miess has been involved as a lithographer and printer in the production of numerous editions and catalogues by Gerhard Richter. As a non-scientist, but nevertheless in possession of intimate knowledge of the context of the works and the rhizome of the biographies of the men portrayed, Miess took a path on which he complemented Richter’s aleatoric iconography with his own, equally free literary research. The result, after 15 years of research, is now available in book form.
„Die Freiheit der Dinge. Ergänzungen zu Gerhard Richters Werkserie 48 Portraits“ (“The Freedom of Things. Additions to Gerhard Richter’s series 48 Portraits”, published by Strzelecki Books, Cologne, available in bookstores) inspired Richter so much that he devoted himself to the subject again. For the special edition of Heinrich Miess’s book, Gerhard Richter has created a surprising edition for Provinz. It is a reworked photographic reproduction of a portrait of Mao Zedong (1893-1976). The edition goes back to a press photo taken by Gerhard Richter, which the artist included in his “Atlas” exactly 50 years ago as plate 28. The Chinese tyrant, along with other more or less prominent men and women, was part of the portrait reservoir of several hundred images from which Richter finally chose the selection of the well-known 48 white, male, Western European and North American composers, philosophers, writers and scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries.
