Schweizer Alpen II - B2

B2 is among the more snow-dominated compositions in the Schweizer Alpen II sequence. Diagonal ridges of white and light grey – the packed snow and ice formations of a high-altitude Alpine environment – sweep across the image from upper-left toward lower-right, crossing over a broad central area of mid-grey rock. The black marks that concentrate along the boundaries of snow and rock record the deep shadows of crevices and ledges, giving edge and structure to what would otherwise be a purely tonal interplay.

No sky or horizon is present. The view is entirely from within the mountain surface, the scale ambiguous and the cropping tight – which pushes the composition toward abstraction even as the Alpine subject remains wholly legible. The screenprint process achieves this through reduction: three or four flat tonal values are sufficient to capture both the physical character of the terrain and the graphic dynamism of its diagonal structure.

Within Richter's early catalogue, the Schweizer Alpen prints represent a decisive use of screenprint to engage with photographic material through reduction rather than blur – a different, and underappreciated, strand of his approach to the photographic image. B2, as part of the rarer Series II, is a significant work within that body.