Blumenstrauß – P3

In 2009, Gerhard Richter produced the oil on canvas ‘Blumenstrauß’, a compelling contribution to his
iconic photo paintings series. The artist projected a photograph of a sparsely filled vase of seemingly
lifeless flowers onto the canvas, painstakingly replicating the colours as he painted over the
projection. Yet, Richter did not reproduce the photograph exactly, instead employing his signature
blurring effect to abstract the image in a manner reminiscent of an unfocused camera.

Richter rendered this blurred image further abstract by using a squeegee to pull paint across the
canvas and over the painted image. These overlaying colours are faint, his strokes appearing choppy
yet consistent as it subtly further obscures the base image by seemingly aging it like an old
photograph.

In 2014, Richter produced ‘Blumenstrauß (P3)’, an exceptional chromogenic print mounted on
aluminium which maintains the integrity of the original painting. The facsimile also builds on the
original’s discourses on abstraction through the logic of the photograph. ‘Blumenstrauß (P3)’
continues the journey of the vase of flowers from photograph to painting by translating the image
back into its original medium, further abstracting it and classifying this print as an authentic artwork
in its own right.