Provenance
Barbara Gladstone Gallery / Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, New York
Günter Ulbricht Collection, Dusseldorf
Collection Bernd F. Lunkewitz, Berlin (acquired from the above in the 1980s)
Christie's, London, October 16, 2009, lot 13
Private Collection, Europe
Exhibited
New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery / Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, Gerhard Richter. Paintings 1964-1974, December 13, 1986 – January 17, 1987, no. 167/2, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967)
Literature
Gerhard Richter, exh. cat., Gegenverkehr, Aachen, 1969, no. 45, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967)
Gerhard Richter, exh. cat., XXXVI Biennale, Venice, 1972, no. 167/2, p. 68 (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967)
Jürgen Harten, Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: Paintings 1962-1985, Cologne, 1986, no. 167/2, p. 154 (illustrated, p. 68, incorrectly dated 1967)
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, ed., Gerhard Richter, Werkübersicht/Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1993, no. 167-2, n.p. (illustrated, incorrectly dated 1967)
Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter Landscapes, 2011, p. 19
Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter. Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1968, vol. 1 (nos. 1 – 198), Ostfildern, 2011, no. 167-2, p. 337 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
An early photo-painting by Gerhard Richter, Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape), 1966, is among the first landscape paintings that the artist created in his career. Presenting a reinterpretation of the grand tradition of landscape painting in Romanticism, the work presents a sublime mountainous vista shrouded in heavy fog. Rendered in grisaille with the feathered brushwork synonymous with Richter’s blurred painterly idiom, Italienische Landschaft dissolves before our eyes into a flat field of subtle grey striations, pushing the figurative into the realm of abstraction. Painted in 1966, this majestic painting anticipates at once his large scale photo-paintings and abstract works, such as Vierwaldstätter See (Lake Lucerne), 1969, and his monochrome Graue Bilder (Grey Paintings) from the 1970s.

While relatively few landscape paintings exist in Richter’s oeuvre, no other motif has preoccupied the artist for such a sustained duration as that of landscape. Richter painted his first landscape paintings in 1963, just one year after he conceived his very first photo-paintings. Having moved to Düsseldorf from the German Democratic Republic in 1961, Richter, bombarded by the visual onslaught of the Western economic miracle, sought to critically examine the “truth claim” of photography by making paintings based on photographs that he sourced from newspapers, books, and family albums. However, Richter later came to reassess his earlier statements on the criteria for choosing certain photographs, explaining in 1986 how the criterion was, “content, definitely—though I may have denied this at one time” (Gerhard Richter, quoted in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “An Interview with Gerhard Richter”, 1986, October Files, no. 8, Cambridge, 2009, p. 13).

Italienische Landschaft belongs to the group of early photo-paintings of faraway places that art historian Dietmar Elger specifically highlighted as exemplary for the dichotomy they presented “between the objectifiable distance generated by black and white painting and the artist’s personal interest in the motifs” (Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Landscapes, exh. cat., Sprengel Museum, Hannover, 1998, p. 19). As with Niagara Falls, 1964, or Sphinx von Gizeh, 1964, the present work portrays a landscape that Richter himself had never visited; he would tellingly only go on his first holiday abroad in 1968. Based on found photographs, these works collectively convey the middle-class desire for faraway holidays, and the implied economic independence.
With Italienische Landschaft, Richter subversively resuscitates the genre of landscape painting that was deemed outdated in the contemporary art context of the 1960s. While its sublime vista recalls those of Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich, Richter’s landscapes are diffused and void of human presence. As Richter explained, “landscapes…show my yearning…But though these pictures are motivated by the dream of classical Order and a pristine world – by nostalgia, in other words – the anachronism in them takes on a subversive and contemporary quality” (Gerhard Richter, “Notes 1981”, The Daily Practice of Painting, London, 1995, p. 98).

By subtly blurring the image, Richter deliberately aims to create a distance between the viewer and the landscape depicted. If the viewer is encouraged to lose him or herself in the painterly space of traditional landscape painting, in Italienische Landschaft one is, “left in a state of perpetual limbo bracketed by exigent pleasures and an understated but unshakable nihilism. Those who approach Richter’s landscapes with a yearning for the exotic or the pastoral are greeted by images that first intensify that desire and then deflect it” (Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002, p. 67). Masterfully recreating a photograph whilst allowing the process of its painterly making to remain visible, Richter heightens the tension between painting and photography, abstraction and figuration, truth and fiction – presenting to us an image that is conceptually subversive as it is utterly magnificent.
Artist Biography
Gerhard Richter
German • 1932
Powerhouse painter Gerhard Richter has been a key player in defining the formal and ideological agenda for painting in contemporary art. His instantaneously recognizable canvases literally and figuratively blur the lines of representation and abstraction. Uninterested in classification, Richter skates between unorthodoxy and realism, much to the delight of institutions and the market alike.
Richter's color palette of potent hues is all substance and "no style," in the artist's own words. From career start in 1962, Richter developed both his photorealist and abstracted languages side-by-side, producing voraciously and evolving his artistic style in short intervals. Richter's illusory paintings find themselves on the walls of the world's most revered museums—for instance, London’s Tate Modern displays the Cage (1) – (6), 2006 paintings that were named after experimental composer John Cage and that inspired the balletic 'Rambert Event' hosted by Phillips Berkeley Square in 2016.
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12

Gerhard Richter

Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape)

signed and dated "Richter VII.66" on the reverse
oil on canvas
42 1/2 x 44 1/2 in. (108 x 113 cm.)
Painted in 1966.

Estimate
$1,500,000 - 2,000,000

Sold for $4,095,000

Contact Specialist
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1278
aloiacono@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Auction 17 May 2018

1
Jenny Holzer
Truisms: UNEX sign
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $471,000
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2
Cory Arcangel
Photoshop CS: 84 by 66 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient, "Blue, Red, Yellow" (turn reverse off), mousedown x=4000 y=5350, mouse up x=20000 y=1200
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $399,000
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3
Pat Steir
Elective Affinity Waterfall
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $2,295,000
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4
George Condo
Red Head
Estimate $900,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,815,000
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5
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Flexible
Estimate On Request
Sold for $45,315,000
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6
Willem de Kooning
Untitled 13
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $4,155,000
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7
Joan Mitchell
Hours
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $2,775,000
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8
Robert Motherwell
At Five in the Afternoon
Estimate $12,000,000 - 18,000,000
Sold for $12,690,000
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9
Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, Attese
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $3,015,000
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10No Reserve
Anselm Kiefer
Laßt 1000 Blumen blühen (Let 1000 Flowers bloom)
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000 •
Sold for $1,215,000
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11
Mark Bradford
Black Venus
Estimate $5,000,000 - 7,000,000
Sold for $6,052,500
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12
Gerhard Richter
Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $4,095,000
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13
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (811-2)
Estimate $12,000,000 - 18,000,000
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14
Andy Warhol
Last Supper
Estimate $8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $8,232,500
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15
Ron Mueck
Man in Blankets
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $447,000
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16
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (Magic Worms)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,139,750
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17
Cy Twombly
Untitled (Ramifications)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,455,000
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18
Sigmar Polke
Stadtbild II (City Painting II)
Estimate $12,000,000 - 18,000,000
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19
Arshile Gorky
Untitled (Study for Mural)
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $275,000
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20
René Magritte
La grande table
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,295,000
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21
Henry Moore
Working Model for Draped Reclining Mother and Baby
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $4,215,000
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22
This lot is no longer available.
23
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $5,000,000 - 7,000,000
Sold for $5,940,000
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24
Georg Baselitz
Schwarze Säule (Black Column)
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,327,500
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25
This lot is no longer available.
26No Reserve
Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Free Standing Large Garden Sculpture Mask M24.g)
Estimate $500,000 - 800,000 •
Sold for $519,000
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27
Wayne Thiebaud
Valley Ranch
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,815,000
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28
Kerry James Marshall
Untitled (Blanket Couple)
Estimate $3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for $4,335,000
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29
This lot is no longer available.
30
Andy Warhol
16 Flowers
Estimate $5,000,000 - 7,000,000
Sold for $5,377,500
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31
Adrian Ghenie
Elvis
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $519,000
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32
Andy Warhol
Two Marilyns
Estimate $3,000,000 - 4,000,000
Sold for $3,200,000
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33
Donald Judd
Untitled
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $2,655,000
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34
Cady Noland
Tower of Terror
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,207,501
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35
Luc Tuymans
Model
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
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36
Fernando Botero
Yellow Niña
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $555,000
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37
Anish Kapoor
Untitled
Estimate $550,000 - 750,000
Sold for $735,000
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38
Maurizio Cattelan
Museums League
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $27,500
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20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Auction 17 May 2018

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Gerhard Richter

12

Gerhard Richter

Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape)

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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