Gerhard Richter - 66 Zeichnungen, Halifax 1978 - König 1997

The title of the book already indicates that the 66 pencil drawings reproduced here in original size were created in the Canadian provincial capital of Halifax in 1978, when Gerhard Richter was a visiting professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design during the summer semester. As he did not have a studio of his own during these months, oil painting had to take a back seat. Apart from the drawings published here, and a few watercolors of the same size, the only other work created in Halifax was 128 photographs of a painting.
In Halifax, where he lived in relative isolation, Gerhard Richter prepared a sheet of writing paper in the same way that one keeps a diary, and initially outlined the projection area of 90x70 mm on it with the help of a stencil. He then used a hard, sharp pencil to record soundtracks here and there on the blank screen. As he slowly continued to draw, abstract pictorial forms developed from this, which followed no compositional scheme and sought to keep away from anything familiar. - Due to the delicate and at the same time self-confident lines the drawings give the impression of finished intermediate images. Anything sketchy is excluded in them, but so is anything final. Gerhard Richter showed the Halifax drawings in public for the first time in spring 1979. They were on display in one of the elongated rooms of Konrad Fischer's gallery in Düsseldorf. From there, the sheets came directly into the possession of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum. Since then, the drawing block has been exhibited four times, but hardly anyone remembers this.
With a beautiful text by Gerhard Storck, this small but generous publication was published by Walther König in 1997, in an edition of 2.000 copies.

158p - GER - 13x18cm - softcover - good condition