Color offset lithograph mounted on aluminum
Germany, circa 2012
Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) – German postwar painter
‘Seestück (See-See)’
Signed and dated in blue ink lower right ‘G. Richter 14.7.12’
Edited by Museum Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg for their Gerhard Richter retrospective, 2011
Signed by the artist at the exhibition for the previous owner
Dimensions: 22 2/5 x 23 1/5 in. (56.9 x 58.9 cm.)
Very good condition

Fascinated with the relationship between photography and painting, preeminent postwar painter Gerhard Richter often turns to the former as the main reference for his paintings. In the late 1960s, Richter turned away from news story images and family portraits to work on a series of landscapes, including seascapes. Cleansed of extraneous matter, “Seascape” appears to strive towards the sublime. It is only after a close encounter with the object that we realize it is not the stormy sky we see but an upside down image of the sea, collapsing romantic ideals.

Executed circa 2012, this offset lithograph was later mounted on aluminium. Edited by Museum Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg for their Gerhard Richter retrospective, 2011, the work was signed by the artist at an exhibition for the previous owner. Measuring 22 2/5 x 23 1/5 inches, the work is in overall good condition.

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)

One of the most renowned postwar painters, Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden, his youth was marked by the Nazi and Communist regimes in Germany. In the early 1950s, he attended the Kunstakademie in Dresden, where he was trained in Socialist Realist painting, before moving to West Germany and studying avant-garde art at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Drawing inspiration from fellow artists Signar Polke and Georg Baselitz, Richter established the Capitalist Realist art movement, informed by the Fluxus movement and Happenings. Richter, however, regarded himself primary as a painter, turning towards his Photo-Paintings in the 1960s which garnered great critical acclaim. In the early 1970s, Richter began examining the visual and textural effects of pure applications of paint to canvas, evident in his Color Charts, Vermalung, and other series, eventually alternating between Abstract paintings and naturalistic forms in his work up through the present. He has held retrospectives at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, in addition to important exhibitions at the Venice Biennale and at the documenta in Kassel, Germany, among other venues. He currently lives and works in Cologne, Germany.