Woman Descending the Staircase (Frau die Treppe herabgehend)

Contemporary Art

1965

Gerhard Richter
German, born 1932

Throughout his career, Gerhard Richter has alternated between figuration and abstraction. Woman Descending the Staircase is one of Richter’s photo paintings, figurative works in which the artist transferred found photographs, such as personal snapshots or media images, onto canvas and then dragged a dry brush through the wet pigment, thus blurring the image and rendering the forms elusive. Here, the slightly out-of-focus quality reinforces the motion of an unknown, glamorously dressed woman descending a set of stairs. The work’s silver-blue brushwork suits the elegance of the subject with her glistening evening gown and diaphanous scarf. The composition’s subject and title evoke Marcel Duchamp’s famous work Nude Descending a Staircase (1912; Philadelphia Museum of Art). When it was exhibited in the United States at the 1913 Armory Show, Duchamp’s painting shocked Americans for its radical abstraction. Rather than honoring this modernist icon, Richter protested it, stating that he “could never accept that it had put [an end], once and for all, to a certain kind of painting.” Indeed, in the Art Institute’s work, Richter produced a hauntingly sophisticated image that floats between reality and illusion.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Contemporary Art

Artist: Gerhard Richter
Title: Woman Descending the Staircase (Frau die Treppe herabgehend)
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.: 1965
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: On verso, signed and dated “Richter 65” “Sept. 65” at middle right; “No. 1 (200x130 cm)” on bottom stretcher; “unverkäuflich” and “Eigentümer: Sammlung Wasmuth” written at top right and crossed out; “Frau, die Treppe herabgehend” written at top right.
Dimensions: 198 × 128 cm (79 × 51 in.)
Credit Line: Roy J. and Frances R. Friedman Endowment; gift of Lannan Foundation
Reference Number: 1997.176
Copyright: © Gerhard Richter

Klaus Honnef, Gerhard Richter: Ausstellung, (Aachen: Gegenverkehr, 1969), fig. 61 (ill.)
Gerhard Richter: 36th Biennale in Venice, German Pavilion (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 1972), 5, cat. 926 (ill.).
Wilhelm Weber “Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern,” das kunstwerk 28,6. (Berlin: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1975), 8, fig. 33 (ill.)
Klaus Honnef, Gerhard Richter, (Recklinghausen: Verlag Aurel Bongers, 1976), 28.
Fritz Billeter, “Der eigensinnige Maler Gerhard Richter oder die schwierige Frage nach dem Sinn von Kunst heute,” Tages-Anzeiger Magazin, June 30, 1979, 33.
Denys Zacharopoulos and Ulrich Loock, Gerhard Richter (Wien: Verlag Silke Schreiber, 1985), 18 (ill.).
Jurgen Harten “Catalogue raisonné” Gerhard Richter Bilder Paintings 1962-1985 exh. cat. (Koln: DuMont Buchverlag, 1986), 34, 42, no. 92, 363.
Jonas Storsve, “Gerhard Richter: la peinture á venir,” Art Press 161 (September 1991), 12-20, 20 (color ill.).
Gerhard Richter: Werkübersicht / Catalogue raisonné 1962-1993, Vol. 3 (Bonn: Kunst–und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1993), fig. 92, p. 151.
Paul Ardenne: Art. L’âge contemporain, Paris 1997, color ill. p. 81 (requested from Ishare)
“Calendar,” The Burlington Magazine 139, 1133 (The Burlington Magazine Publications, August 1997), p. 578, no. 77.
“Galleries of Contemporary Art,” News and Events: The Art Institute of Chicago, May/June 1997, pp. 9-10 (ill.).
Christopher Andreae “The Art of Artifice,” The Christian Science Monitor, June 2, 1997, p. 16 (ill.).
Art: Das Kunstmagazin, May 1997, ill. p. 128 (requested from Ryerson, couldn’t find)
Modern and Contemporary Art, The Lannan Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, 25, 1. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1999), pp. 28, 29 (color ill.), 94, fig. 51.
Tom Holert, “Call to Order,” Artforum 40, 5 (January 2002), pp. 98-105, 104 (color ill.).
Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter, Maler, (Köln: DuMont-Literatur-und-Kunst-Verl., 2002) p. 111, fig. 92 (color ill.), 112-113.
Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 129 (color ill.).
Douglas Fogle, The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960-1982 exh. cat. (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2003), pp. 91 (ill.), 123-124.
Robert Storr Gerhard Richter: Doubt and Belief in Painting (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2003), pp. 26 (ill.), 57.
Graham MacPhee “Technology, Time, and the Return of Abstract Painting,” in Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Painting: Hybridity, Hegemony, Historicism, ed. Jonathan Harris (Liverpool University Press, 2003), pp. 10, 133 (color ill.), no. 3.
Jason Gaiger, “Post-conceptual painting: Gerhard Richter’s extended leave-taking,” in Themes in Contemporary Art, ed. Gill Perry and Paul Wood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 99-108, 103 (color ill.).
Stefan Gronert Gerhard Richter: Portraits (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006), 72, 73 (ill.).
Jon Thompson, How to Read a Modern Painting: Understanding and Enjoying the Modern Masters, English ed., first published in Belgium by Ludion Ghent. (New York: Abrams, 2006), p. 304, 305 (color ill.).
M. Darsie Alexander and Bartholomew Ryan, International Pop, exh. cat. (Walker Art Center, 2015), pp. 302, pl. 95 (color ill.); 369.

Rome, Galleria la Tartaruga, Gerhard Richter, Jan. 20-Feb. 20, 1966, no cat.
Zurich, City-Galerie Bruno Bischofberger,Gerhard Richter, Mar. 30-Apr. 16, 1966, no cat.
Los Angeles, Lannan Foundation Gallery, Facts and Figures: Selections for the Lannan Foundation Collection, Oct. 22, 1994-Feb. 26, 1995, no cat.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Gerhard Richter: 40 Years of Painting, Feb. 14–May 21, 2002, no cat. no.; Art Institute of Chicago, June 22–Sep. 15, 2002; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oct. 11, 2002–Jan. 14, 2003; Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Feb. 20 – May18, 2003.
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, International Pop, Apr. 11–Aug. 29, 2015, pl. 95 (as Frau die Treppe herabgehend); Dallas Museum of Art, Oct. 11, 2015–Jan. 17, 2016; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Feb. 24–May 15, 2016.

The artist; sold to Johannes Wasmuth, Rolandseck, Germany [this and the following according to Richter 1993, cat. 92] ; sold to the State of Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany; by exchange to Johannes Wasmuth, Rolandseck, Germany; sold through Luhring Augustine, New York, to The Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles, Nov. 23, 1993 [according to email from Luhring Augustine, Sept. 15, 2022, copy in curatorial object file]; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997.

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