in online exhibitionsPainterly and 55 Years of Schellmann Art

Hood, 1996

Published for Documenta X
Offset print on handmade Japanese rag paper, 44 x 44 cm (17¼ x 17¼ in). Edition of 60, signed and numbered.

Not available

This edition is a compelling example of Gerhard Richter’s ongoing engagement with media imagery and the process of transformation through painting. Based on a photograph originally published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – itself sourced from the German Press Agency, dpa – the image shows two figures, one hooded, in a stark, documentary-style scene. Richter intervened in this image by overpainting the newspaper reproduction with gestural strokes of red and black oil paint, partially obscuring and abstracting the scene. He then photographed the altered image and reproduced this as an offset print, thereby layering several modes of mediation: press photography, newspaper print, painting, and mechanical reproduction. This process distances the viewer from the original event and highlights Richter’s preoccupation with how images are circulated, manipulated, and remembered. Hood reflects both political unease and aesthetic ambiguity, encapsulating Richter’s fascination with the fragile boundary between documentation and abstraction.