Rhein, also known as Rhein I, is a colour photograph created by the German photographer Andreas Gursky in 1996. The photograph had a six copies edition. This was the first version of a photograph that become better known with his second version, Rhein II, in 1999. [1] [2]
Description and analysis
The photograph was created using digital manipulation, which removed several human references, including people and buildings. The final result, showing the river flowing across green fields, beneath a blue cloudy sky, has similarities with the abstract paintings of Barnett Newman. Peter Galassi stated that: "Behind Gursky's taste for the imposing clarity of unbroken parallel forms spanning a slender rectangle lies a rich inheritance of reductivist aesthetics, from Friedrich to Newman to Richter to Donald Judd... (with) images that read like horizontal versions of Newman paintings." [3] This version has less vivid colors and a narrower field of vision than Rhein II.
Art market
Three prints of this photograph are among the most expensive ever sold. A print was sold by $2,098,500 at Sotheby's, New York, at 10 May 2011, and another by $1,925,000 at Phillips, at 16 May 2013. [4] [5] [6] A third sold by $1,805,000 at Sotheby's, New York, at 12 November 2014. [7]
Public collections
A print of the photograph is held at the Samsung Museum of Art, in Seoul. [8]
References
- ^ Rhein, at Sotheby's Catalogue
- ^ Rhein, Christie's
- ^ Peter Galassi, 'Gursky's World' in Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Museum of Modern Art, Andreas Gursky, 2001, p. 35
- ^ Rhein I, Sotheby's New York
- ^ Rhein, Phillips
- ^ Moving to Abstraction: Andreas Gursky’s Rhine, 26 July 2019, Daily Art Magazine
- ^ Rhein, at Sotheby's Catalogue
- ^ Rhein, Christie's
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