(born in Eutin in 1962)
Untitled, signed and dated on the reverse D Richter 2000 and dedicated, oil on canvas, 80 x 40 cm, on the stretcher with the archive no. DR/K 588, framed, (PS)

Provenance:
Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (label and stamp on the frame)

The works of Daniel Richter move between the poles of his interest in the playful and excessive process of painting, on the one hand, and the emphasis on the conceptual role of painting as a means of solving social, moral and ethical problems on the other. The figurative and in part symbolist pictures abduct the viewer into a complex journey in space and time; he leaves it to the individual to make his own world comprehensible. This is particularly the case with the work shown here. According to the perspective of the beholder, a face with large eye sockets - like a skull - appears to us, or we can make out three figures apparently plummeting out of nowhere. The colourfulness of the figures reveals the effect of the ‘thermal image’ so typical of Richter around the turn of the millennium: in their vibrant yellow-orange and red tones, they gleam out of the background which is poured and worked in a variety of green tones. The surface of the painting, onto which the colour appears to have been dropped, poured and thrown in diverse directions, supports the impression of great dynamism just as do the implied movements of the fighting and falling figures. With the forthrightness of his allusions, Richter flirts and, by means of the supposed accessibility of his work, he increases in us the desire for observation, arousing our curiosity for further hidden clues.