In his multifaceted oeuvre, Gerhard Richter has repeatedly used photographs as the basis for his works. His blurred paintings based on photographs have been analysed many times by art researchers. In contrast to this, however, Richter also painted directly over standard photographic prints with oil paint. Inspired by the random splashes and traces of colour on the originals for his paintings, he created pictorial overpaintings. Such overpaintings could already be found in Richter’s atlas. Almost all of these generally small-format paintings are privately owned and are rarely shown in public. Even in these subjects, which are covered by a painterly veil, Richter proves himself to be a ‘master of keeping his distance’, as Robert Storr once put it. This monograph offers a unique opportunity to honour an extensive body of work in the artist’s oeuvre that has received little attention to date.



Richter has been creating overpainted photographs since the late 1980s. Despite their small format, they have a significant significance within Richter’s oeuvre: like no other group of works, they embody the interface between the depiction of photographic image content and abstract painting. It is not just a matter of a technique – such as watercolour on paper – “but rather a special methodical procedure for obtaining unfamiliar images on the basis of the familiar.” (Uwe M. Schneede) Through photography, a representational motif is depicted, while at the same time an abstract colour material is applied to the surface. These two levels of reality appear as an interlocking unity, forming a close, exciting and at the same time subtle connection.



“I took small photos,” Gerhard Richter said in an interview in 1991, “which I smeared with colour. Something of this problematic came together”. By “this problematic”, Richter is referring to the relationship between the reality of the photograph and the reality of the colour. “Photography has almost no reality, it’s almost just an image,” Richter remarks, “and painting always has reality, you can touch the colour, it has presence.”



Richter’s overpainted photographs are based on his personal photo archive. Among the images used are pictures of Richter’s family, of nature or city views or holiday photos from Sils Maria and Juist; some are intimate testimonies to his private life, others are blurred snapshots or banal landscape shots. The overpaintings are created in close connection with his work on abstract paintings, for which Richter uses a squeegee. According to Richter, the colour masses remaining on the squeegee always show “beautiful spots”. Accordingly, he applies the colour to photographs by dabbing, scraping, dabbing or spackling, whereby the artist conceals certain parts of the underlying motif and thus directs the viewer’s gaze. The result is a dynamic of revealing and concealing, while colour and photography represent competing dimensions.



Richter’s painterly effects on the limited space of a mostly 10 x 15 cm photograph prove to be astonishingly diverse. They range from a few sparse splashes of glossy colour to full-surface overpainting, reminiscent of the artist’s large abstract canvases. Here, the colour seems to interact with the underlying motif according to the principle of controlled chance. The colour values of the photograph regularly correspond with the chromaticity of the paint application. This appears three-dimensional and tangible; together with the high-gloss photographic surface, it creates a strangely tactile attraction. While the familiarity of the snapshots only suggests intimacy, physical proximity is necessary in order to appreciate the diverse effects in these concentrated works.