Page 26 - Studio International - September 1972

DOUBTS IN THE The German painter Gerhard Richter finally was dominated by two-dimensional
established an international reputation at this easel-painting the depicted reality had always
FACE OF REALITY year's Venice Biennale. Does his success there to be illusionistic. Only in the 192os, when
reflect a late recognition of the quality of the Marcel Duchamp uncovered a new dimension
The paintings of kind of photographically-based realism which of tangible artistic reality with the invention of
Richter began to explore about ten years ago, or the readymade did it fully become clear how
Gerhard Richter does it rather relate to the vogue for other ambiguous and misleading, how wide open and
kinds of photographically-inspired realism complex is the problem of the relationship
(especially American) which dominated a large between reality and how it is depicted in art.
part of `Documenta 5' this year ? The signs of that total retreat from forms of
Heiner Stachelhaus The problem of what reality is has always literary and anecdotal realism which Duchamp
been crucial in painting. But as long as the art completed can also be sensed in the work of
Cezanne, for whom the act of creating, of
composing, was identical with that of 'realizing',
and for whom it was vital 'to advance all parts of
the canvas together'. After Duchamp, the
Dutchman Theo van Doesburg formulated the
principles of 'concrete painting', the aim of
which was 'to exert an optically real spatial
influence on the spectator, to advance the space
out beyond the picture plane' and thus 'to deny
the classic optical frontality of painting'.
(Fragment of the manifesto of Elementarism,
1926/27.)
This interest in 'anti-illusionism', in the
factual, the concrete, the tangible and the
spatial, this fundamental questioning of the
nature of reality itself, then inspired younger
artists to make further researches which often
yielded results capable of further development.
Townscape P 1968
Thus Max Bill described his painting and
200 200 CM.
sculpture after 1936 as 'concrete'. Other artists
who worked in a similar area were the Italian
painter-in-white Enea (only recently
rediscovered), Fontana (with his series of
`concetti spatiale'), the Italian Manzoni, the
Frenchman Yves Klein, the artists of the
Nouveau Realisme, the international
Zero-movement and the Parisian Groupe de
Recherche d'Art Visuel.
New media and new materials were now
employed in the search for the nature of reality.
Essentially these reflected an artistic reaction
against a society which was constantly improving
technologically and also a general mistrust of
ideologies. A new aesthetic was developed based
on the actual, concrete reality of light,
movement, shadows, space and on the nature of
the materials employed.
Gerhard Richter's work (particularly the
blurred copies of photographs which he began
in 1962) show how a painter was able to relate to
this new aesthetic and create in terms of it.
Richter, born in Dresden in 1932, was a poster
artist in Zittau before beginning his studies at
the Dresden Art Academy. He remained there
for eight years, then moved to Düsseldorf in
1960 and studied at the Academy there from
1961 until 1964. After that he was for a time
visiting lecturer at the Hochschule fur Bildende
Künste in Hamburg and an art teacher at a
Düsseldorf High School. In 1971 he was
appointed Professor at the Düsseldorf Academy.
Richter's fresh start as an artist in Düsseldorf
came therefore precisely during the period of
greatest involvement with light, movement,
space and new and modern materials. In
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