Mouth (Mund)

1963

Gerhard Richter
German, born 1932

In the early 1960s Gerhard Richter enlarged found images—such as personal snapshots or photographs drawn from newspapers or magazines—and transferred them onto canvas. He then blurred these by dragging a dry brush over the wet pigment. As Richter explained, “I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant… . I blur things to make all the parts a closer fit. Perhaps I also blur out the excess of unimportant in- formation.” Mouth, one of the artist’s earliest surviving canvases, is based on a photograph of the French actress Brigitte Bardot.

Status: On View, Gallery 289
Department: Contemporary Art

Artist: Gerhard Richter
Title: Mouth (Mund)
Place: Germany (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1963
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 67 × 74 cm (26 1/2 × 29 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Through prior gift of Mrs. Henry C. Woods; gift of Lannan Foundation
Reference Number: 1997.173

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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