Schattenbild I

Schattenbild I - which translates to ‘Shadow picture’ 1 - bears compositional and thematic similarities to the 1988 work, Kerze, also part of the Atlas series. In this print, Richter vaunts a creative process that is at once canonical and avant-garde. A technical ‘test’ image that speaks to the canonical and art historical processes that undeniably influenced Richter during this period, this procedural work is nonetheless definitely ‘modern’. Although equivalent to a simple, bold composition comprising a cream border that surrounds a three-dimensional, recessed area, sketched out in light and darker greys, the work introduces shadow and perspective to its otherwise simplistic mix.

One of Richter’s ‘shadow paintings’, produced during 1967 and 1968, the work marries Renaissance fascinations with mathematics, perspective, and optical effects, and Richter’s tendency towards non-representational art, atonality, and grid patterns. Emblematic of his chiefly experimental œuvre during the late 1960s, the artwork precedes major realist artworks, such as the 1971-2 series 48 Portraits, first exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1972. During this period, Richter continued to produce works using hands-on printmaking processes, including screen printing, photolithography, and collotype. From 1974, he stopped working with print media, opting in favour of photographs. Many of these now appear in his endless ‘Atlas’ - a large-scale image-based collection, from which Richter has produced such well-known works as Betty (1991).