''48 Portraits'' is a group of works by the German painter

Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced Abstract art, abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, photographs and Glass art, glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important con ...

. In the years Richter created a series of portraits of personalities who influenced modernity in a

photorealistic Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can b ...

manner. They all portray exclusively men. Oriented towards a central imaginary observer, they give the impression of a modern painted

frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

of portrait heads. Richter participated in the 1972 edition of the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

with this work. They are exhibited in the

Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lic ...

in Cologne. The series includes portraits of the following persons:

References

External links

''48 Portraits'' at Gerhard-Richter.com
1970s paintings Sets of portraits Paintings by Gerhard Richter {{Gerhard Richter