Gerhard Richter German, born 1932
Woman Descending the Staircase (Frau die Treppe herabgehend)
1965
Gerhard Richter's 'Woman Descending the Staircase' ('Frau die Treppe herabgehend', 1965) is an early photo-painting: a fashionable woman in a long evening dress, based on a photograph in a glossy magazine, translated into oil on canvas and then softly blurred with a brush drag across the wet paint. The work quietly updates Duchamp's 1912 'Nude Descending a Staircase' for the era of mass media and is held today at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Exhibition Venue
Image source: Art Institute of Chicago