Großer Vorhang, 1967

About the Work

From a distance, we seem to be looking at a curtain falling in soft folds. As we come closer, the lines begin to flicker, the illusionistic effect dissolves. Richter’s work is a commentary on painting’s ever-recurring attempts to reproduce reality in a picture. In the Early Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti described painting as a window onto another world which strives for emancipation from its two-dimensional surface. Richter mistrusts this claim. He has painted a real-looking curtain which is closed – thus blocking the view to the other world. At the same time, the ‘Curtain’ is an abstract painting that also references the Op Art of the 1960s, which made use of perplexing optical effects.