Exceptional Works: Gerhard Richter

Familie Liechti (The Liechti Family), 1966

Oil on canvas 26 3/4 x 33 1/2 inches 68 x 85 cm

“[The family paintings] appear at first as though they have been torn from a family album shortly before Richter’s flight from East Germany to serve as souvenirs of a past that was being left behind forever...”

—Art historian Benjamin H.D. Buchloh

Featured on the occasion of Art Basel Paris, Gerhard Richter’s Familie Liechti (The Liechti Family) (1966) is an early, significant example of the artist’s photo paintings. Richter’s family photo album was “one of the few belongings Richter would take with him when he fled to the West,” according to Dietmar Elger, director of the Gerhard Richter Archive. Richter painted his family paintings based on source material from his private photo album or friends’ albums. This work has remained in the same private collection for the past forty years.

The Liechti family

A family photograph, showing the Liechtis posing in front of what could be assumed to be their home in Switzerland, is part of Richter’s studio archive and served as the basis for the present painting. The refinement of the horizontally oriented sfumato in this painting is at odds with the precision of photorealism as a genre: the visual dissonance creates a contradictory impression, with the physicality of the painting brought forward while the origin of the image seems to fade away.

Gerhard Richter, Familie Ruhnau (The Ruhnau Family), 1968 (detail)

Gerhard Richter, Familie Schmidt (The Schmidt Family), 1964 (detail). Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany

Gerhard Richter, Familie am Meer (Family at the Seaside), 1964. Sylvia and Ulrich Ströher Collection, Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, Germany

 

In the present work, as with all of his photo paintings of families, Richter mines the innate mundanity of the scene at hand, depicting with fine detail the nuanced interactions between family members of multiple generations—smiling children of various ages are shown flanking their elders, who are clad in formal dark blouses and jackets—and replicating the familiar kind of stilted, choreographed symmetry that arises from the corralling of individuals for a group picture.

Gerhard Richter, Tante Marianne (Aunt Marianne), 1965 (detail)

Gerhard Richter, Personengruppe (Group of People), 1965 (detail)

Family photos have formed the basis for some of Richter’s most famous works—including Tante Marianne (Aunt Marianne) (1965)—while other important works depict larger groups and crowds of individuals, such as Personengruppe (Group of People) (1965).

Familie Liechti (The Liechti Family) is notable for bridging these two key aspects of Richter’s early oeuvre, combining the personal intimacies of the family snapshot with an examination of the psychic tensions and political implications at stake between the individual and the group at large.

The Liechti family were the first owners of Richter’s painting titled Familie im Schnee (Family in the Snow), made the same year.

Additional featured works by the artist © Gerhard Richter 2024.

Gerhard Richter, Familie im Schnee (Family in the Snow), 1966