Richter's Pictures Before the Paint

Gerhard Richter’s Atlas gives the source material its own walls. It gathers photographs, newspaper clippings, color charts, and sketches into numbered panels: an archive in which the selection and arrangement of images become visible before attention shifts to the painted surface.

When Atlas first went on show in Utrecht in 1972, under the title Atlas der Fotos und Skizzen, it already contained 315 parts. It continued to expand. What might have remained studio reference material became an exhibited work, with its own history alongside the paintings.

That makes a useful companion to Richter’s blur. His photographic sources included newspaper pictures, private snapshots, and aerial views of cities and mountains. For Forty-eight Portraits, made in 1971–72, he selected faces of composers and writers, including Mahler and Kafka. The handling of paint comes after these decisions about what to keep and what to paint. Atlas lets those earlier decisions occupy the foreground.