Ema (Nude on a Staircase)

Gerhard Richter's 'Ema (Nude on a Staircase)' (1992) is a large photo-painting of the artist's wife Ema Müller descending a staircase, translated into oil from one of Richter's own photographs with the softly blurred, almost out-of-focus surface that is his signature. Responding, some ninety years later, to Marcel Duchamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase' (1912), the picture plays on the tension between a fully modelled figure and the photographic memory of it. It is a cornerstone of the Museum Ludwig's Richter holdings in Cologne and a key statement of the artist's simultaneous commitment to abstraction and photo-realism.

Exhibition Venue

Museum Ludwig

Cologne, Germany