Tulpen

The German artist Gerhard Richter is one of the most influential painters of our age. Besides abstract compositions, he has created photorealist figurative paintings, whose motifs are typically drawn from the so-called “Atlas”: a collection of newspaper clippings, photographs, and sketches that Richter has amassed since the 1960s and used as source materials for his “photo-pictures.” As this flower still life with yellow tulips—a classical subject in the history of art—illustrates, Richter’s translation of the motif into the timeless medium of painting sparks a dynamic interplay between photographic snapshot and painted picture in which realism and abstraction enrich each other.

Credit: On permanent loan from private collection

Not on display