Sigmar Polke / Gerhard Richter
Umwandlung

Invited to produce a limited edition of prints, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter decide on a joint production. The offset print on cardboard shows a sequence of five b/w photographs arranged in two rows, which are intended to document the process of transformation of a mountain massif. In the top row of three photographs, we can see how an Alpine panorama, partly covered in snow, increasingly disappears into a fog-like appearance. In the two remaining photographs in the second row, this undefined phenomenon has already covered the mountain massif and finally forms a nebulous ball of light against a dark background. In pseudo-scientific objectivity, two sentences below the reproductions identify them as documentation of a joint action by Polke and Richter: “5 phases of a transformation undertaken by Polke and Richter. The massif was transformed into a sphere for two hours on April 26, 1968.” There seem to be no limits to the creative power of the two artists. The jointly produced offset print “Umwandlung” (Transformation) is based on the manipulation of photographs that Richter had taken of a newspaper image and the light source in his darkroom. Polke claims a pictorial error, or rather a supposed printing error, in the form of a small white spot on the fifth motif.¹ The humorously ironic examination of artistic creativity and ingenious self-aggrandizement, as expressed elsewhere in the work of Polke (… höhere Wesen befehlen, 1968, EB10), and Richter’s analytical interest in optical phenomena, the manipulation of perceptions (Atelier, 1968/2017, EB91) and the painterly preoccupation with landscape come together in the limited edition Umwandlung. The edition details are printed in small font on the front of the sheet. The sheet is numbered and dated and signed in part “Polke/Richter” and in part “Richter/Polke”. The joint edition was published at the end of 1968 to accompany two exhibitions by the two artists at Galerie Block: Sigmar Polke. Moderne Kunst (December 1968 – January 1969) and Gerhard Richter. Städte (January – February 1969).
Text: Birgit Eusterschulte

¹ Cf. Hubertus Butin, Gerhard Richter. Editionen, Ostfildern 2014, p. 162 and p. 67.