Author Description

Reproducing a recently found 1962 notebook, this small, beautifully clothbound volume reveals a never-before-seen dimension of Gerhard Richter's art. Comic Strip 1962 contains a series of cartoon-like drawings, done in the style of American greats such as Saul Steinberg (hence the artist's cartoonist-style abbreviation of his name to "Gerd" here). The black-and-white drawings generally feature one or many hatted silhouette figures, floating in the air, against bare backdrops or atop planets, with occasional handwritten text (in German, and mostly illegible) interspersed around them. These works, printed at their original size, and made at the outset of Richter's career, greatly expand our picture of the influences and factors at play in his early years as part of the Capitalist Realist movement.