Cathedral Square, Milan
| Cathedral Square, Milan |
|---|
| Gerhard Richter , 1968 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 275 × 290 cm |
| Private collection
Link to the picture |
Domplatz, Milan is a painting by Gerhard Richter from 1968. The photo-realistic picture is one of Richter's largest figurative pictures with a size of 2.75 mx 2.90 m. It shows a section of the Milan Cathedral Square between the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele and the Milan Cathedral .
The picture was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York on May 14, 2013 for a price of $ 37.1 million. This surpassed the record price of $ 34.3 million for Richter's Abstract Painting (809-1) , which had been reached a few months earlier .
history
Domplatz, Milan was commissioned by the Milanese company Siemens Elettra and was located in their offices in Milan from 1968 to 1998 . In 1998 it was acquired by the Pritzker family of collectors and hung in the Park Hyatt Hotel in Chicago for over ten years. In 2013 the Hyatt Hotels Corporation was put up for auction at Sotheby's. It was auctioned by Donald L. Bryant, a Californian art collector and owner of the Bryant Family Vineyard ( Napa County ).
description
A section from the north side of Milan Cathedral Square is shown from a bird's eye view. The facade of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, an imposing building from the 19th century, takes up most of the left-hand half of the picture, while only part of the north transept and the front of the outer nave are covered by the Gothic Cathedral of Santa Maria Nascente . Parked cars can be seen between the Galleria and Domplatz, a few candelabra on the square itself and - as in some images from the early days of photography - blurred people and indefinite objects. The contours of all structures are blurred and blurred. The various shades of gray in which the entire painting is executed are also reminiscent of black and white photos.
Richter did not put the cathedral as the most famous landmark in Milan into the center of the picture. Instead, his gaze is directed towards the immediate area with the passage between the cathedral and the Galleria in the center. Richter had already painted the front view of the cathedral in 1964 in his picture Milan, Cathedral - also only in gray tones and a smaller format of 130 × 130 cm. Parallel to Domplatz, Milan , another picture was created with Milan as a subject based on an aerial photo , also only in gray tones and with blurred contours, which Richter later cut into 9 pieces in the format of 85 × 90 cm, defined them as independent pictures, and the are listed in the Catalog Raisonné under 170/1 to 170/9.
The template, based on which Richter made his picture Domplatz, Milan , was a very sharp newspaper photo , from which he zoomed in and modified a section.
Photography and cityscapes in Gerhard Richter's work
Since the 1960s, Richter has increasingly dealt with the medium of photography by referring to photographs when selecting his motifs. In 1962 he created his first representational pictures based on photo templates. Richter has expressed himself several times in interviews about his attitude to photography. According to his statements, the motifs were never arbitrary, rather he struggled to “find a suitable photo at all”. Provocatively and in contrast to current media theories, he viewed photography as “the only image that reports absolutely true because it sees 'objectively'; it is primarily believed, even if it is technically defective ”. In a conversation with Dieter Hülsmanns and Fridolin Reske, he said.
“A photo, unless it's“ designed ”by an art photographer, is simply the best picture I can think of. It's perfect, so independent and unconditional, it has no style. The photo is the only image that can truly inform, even if it is technically inadequate and what is depicted is barely recognizable. "
Up to Richter's late work there are works that were created on the basis of aerial photographs, from the Milan work 170/1 to 170/9 to the print series Bridge 14 FEB 45 (II) from 2000.
After his gray pictures, which represent a rejection of everything creative and which, according to Richter's own statement, are "the welcome and only possible correspondence to indifference, lack of opinion, refusal to testify and formlessness", his " Abstract Pictures " became brilliant in 1976 Dealing with the color.
literature
- Angelika Thill u. a .: Gerhard Richter: A Catalog Raisonné 1962-1993 . Vol. 3. Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje-Cantz, 1993. Cat. No. 169.
- Gerhard Richter. Photography and painting - painting as photography . Eight texts on Gerhard Richter's media strategy. Edited by Dietmar Elger and Kerstin Küster. Gerhard Richter Archive Dresden 2011. Cologne, Verlag der Buchhandlung König 2011. ISBN 3-86335077-4 .
- Gerhard Richter. Gray pictures . Exhibition catalog. Kunstverein Braunschweig, Salve Hospes House, Braunschweig 1975.
- Dietmar Elger: Gerhard Richter. Landscapes . Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje Cantz, 2002. ISBN 3-7701-1772-7 .
Web links
- Cathedral Square, Milan , description, www.gerhard-richter.com
- Sotheby's, Catalog Note
- Sotheby's catalog May 2013, lot 64.
- Most expensive living painter: Richter's "Domplatz, Milan" reaches 29 million
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cathedral Square, Milan , www.gerhard-richter.com , accessed on May 20, 2015.
- ↑ Gerhard Richter Cat. rais. No. 49.
- ^ Benjamin Buchloh : Interview with Gerhard Richter. About the avant-garde. In: Gerhard Richter. Cat.Rais. Vol. 2. p. 86.
- ↑ Quoted from Eckhart Gillen: Gerhard Richter. A devout doubter. Time online. Art.
- ↑ www.gerhard-richter.com , accessed on June 9, 2015.
- ^ Gerhard Richter, quoted from Hans Ulrich Obrist : Gerhard Richter. Text, Frankfurt / M. 1993, p. 76.
