Gerhard Richter, Sindbad

Gerhard Richter

Sindbad

Buchhandlung Walther König, 2010

Since publishing War Cut in 2004, Gerhard Richter's special interest has been a new group of works - autonomous artists' books. "Sinbad" is the title of a series of 98 lacquer pictures, painted on the back of panes of glass in 30 x 24 cm format, from 2008. In their first exhibition, Richter paired them as diptychs, like 49 double pages. As such the conception of this book was already clear at the time of their painting. Richter decided to reproduce all of the pictures in original format, cut over three pages, leaving a bar of two centimetres blank at the binding. This gives the book its form. The seven texts about Sinbad the Sailor, each set in three columns over double pages, give structure to the extensive, "fairytale" series. The banderole around the book contains an introduction to the journey. Every detail - paper, typography, layout and flow of the book - was decided by the artist. The publisher only provided technical help. "Sinbad" is without doubt a further highlight in Gerhard Richter's series of artists' books.