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Mao, 2018
Archival Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Duo 276 g 100% cotton, 29.7 x 23 cm
Edition: 20 (10 PP, 6 AP)
Signed and dated “Richter 2018” front left, titled “Mao” front right and numbered in Arabic numerals. Catalogue Raisonné of Editions No. 175 (1)
Special Edition Heinrich Miess THE FREEDOM OF THINGS, StrzeleckiBooks 2018
Publisher: Provinz Editionen, Bochum, Berlin
Print: Doris Frohnapfel, Cologne
This edition was published by Provinz as a special edition to accompany the book “The Freedom of Things. Supplements to Gerhard Richter’s series 48 Portraits” by Heinrich Miess, published by StrzeleckiBooks, Cologne, 2018. The print was included with the publication.
The edition is based on a photograph by Gerhard Richter from 1968, which can be found in the Atlas of Photos, Collages, and Sketches. This photo is based on a newspaper image from 1967. The motif was also used in reverse as a model for the collotype “Mao” from 1968, see WV No. 13.
Atlas: Plate 28
About the work:
Gerhard Richter’s “48 Portraits” are among the canonical works of West German post-war art. The portrait series, now owned by the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, was the focus of Richter’s exhibition in the German Pavilion at the 1972 Venice Biennale. When Heinrich Miess began collecting material for the “48 Portraits” in the early 2000s, he did not do so to add another volume to the art-historical exegeses of Richter’s work. Since the 1980s, Heinrich Miess has been involved as a lithographer and printer in the production of numerous editions and catalogs by Gerhard Richter. As a non-scientist, yet possessing intimate knowledge of the context of his works and the rhizome of the biographies of the men depicted, Miess embarked on a path that complemented Richter’s aleatoric iconography with his own, equally free literary research. The result, after 15 years of research, is now available in book form.
“The Freedom of Things: Additions to Gerhard Richter’s Series 48 Portraits” (published by Strzelecki Books, Cologne, available in bookstores) so inspired Richter that he revisited the subject. For the special edition of Heinrich Miess’s book, Gerhard Richter has now created a surprising edition for Provinz. It is a reworked photographic reproduction of a portrait of Mao Zedong (1893-1976). The edition is based on a press photo taken by Gerhard Richter, which the artist included in his “Atlas” exactly 50 years ago as plate 28. The Chinese tyrant, along with other more or less prominent men and women, belonged to the several hundred-image portrait collection from which Richter ultimately selected the well-known 48 white, male, Western European and North American composers, philosophers, writers, and scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries.
