(born in Lütjenburg in 1962)
Jump from the towers, 2009, signed, dated Daniel Richter 09 on the reverse, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia

Daniel Richter is one of Germany's best-known contemporary artists. In a constant balancing act between his left-wing political origins as a squatter in Hamburg and his new lifestyle as a German star painter, Richter uses iconographic representations from art history, mass media and pop culture in his works. He places these as if on a stage onto a reduced, mystical pictorial background often characterised by darkness, depicting the figures themselves in a painterly excess of light and colour.

This pictorial composition is typical of Richter and can also be found in his stage designs for the 2010 Salzburg Festival.

In Jump from the towers, it seems as if the figures are jumping out of the screen with wide-open eyes, as if in panic, in reference to the images of the 9/11 terrorist attack circulating in the media. Their bodies dissolve into streaks and splashes of colour as they move, and their colourfulness is reminiscent of the view through a thermal imaging camera. This connotation fits Richter's recurring theme of the total surveillance of society. The figures' leap into the unknown triggers fascination and at the same time nervousness in the viewer.