A painting by Gerhard Richter
German Traces in Halifax

The painting „Halifax“ (1987) by Gerhard Richter

With its flourishing arts and music scene, Halifax has inspired well-known figures from all over the world, including artists like Gerhard Richter, who taught for a summer semester as a guest lecturer at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in 1978.

During his stay, the artist didn’t have a studio, so he concentrated on small-form pieces and experimented with photography. Over the course of several evenings, he produced a series of abstract pencil drawings, measuring only 9x7 centimetres. They were exhibited by Konrad Fischer in October 1979. 
 
The artwork “Halifax” (1978) was produced at the same time, and he exhibited it in the Anna Leonowens Gallery at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design the same year. He mounted the photographs in a 4x4 grid on 8 white panels and arranged them into two rows with 4 squares. He presented an identical version in a room at NSCAD from August 21st to September 9th, 1978. As an experimental work, he published 128 close-ups of this very painting with the NSCAD Press as a photographic documentation. He assembled the small black and white pictures into a mosaic, creating a new artwork, which he named “128 Details from a Picture”.

Anna Leonowens Gallery
1891 Granville St
Halifax, NS
Website of the gallery Description of the painting on Youtube