From: Ifrit, Bagdad I, Bagdad II, and Aladin (Four Works), 2014

One of Germany’s most important contemporary artists, Gerhard Richter’s is regarded as a pioneer of New European Painting style that examines the 20th century’s most difficult moments through a combination of painting and more modern media. Richter was born in Weimar Germany and his family suffered tremendously under the Nazi regime in the 1930’s and 1940’s. He remained in East Germany but would later escape with his wife to West Germany just 2 months before the construction of the Berlin Wall. Richter, like his contemporaries, would create his art using several forms of media – in his case, painting pictures based on black and white photographs he saw in books, newspapers, and that he took himself. The artist would then ‘blur’ the objects to ensure equal representation in his pieces. He’d later go on to work in prints, sculpture, and drawing while continuing his work in his emblematic photographic paintings. Richter’s work has set several auction records over the years.

This series of 4 abstract pieces reference the 1940 British Technicolor historical fantasy film The Thief of Bagdad. In each of the works, Richter’s imagery blends and blurs, drawing the eye to the expressive strength of those vibrant colors and shapes that seem to be ‘lost in translation’.