Gerhard Richter. Eis

The artist's book Gerhard Richter. Eis shows photographs taken by Gerhard Richter on a trip to Greenland in 1972: snowy mountains, ice floes, the vastness of the sea laden with chunks of ice, unspoiled nature. Some of the motifs can be found in Richter’s subsequent work, e.g. Iceberg in Mist [CR: 496-1]. The photographs are juxtaposed with texts which are taken from the 1871 edition of the Brockhaus encyclopaedia and relate to Greenland.

The two covers are indicative of the book’s artistic design; inside, the texts have neither a beginning nor an end, and photographs and texts are partly printed upside down. It is noteworthy that the photographs and texts are always printed in the same size, 8.5 x 12.9 cm, an area which has sometimes been left blank.

The book affords the viewer the possibility to trace this subjective experience of Greenland’s ice in a visual way, completed by neutrally communicated knowledge from the encyclopaedia.