Daniel Richter Tränen ohne Eros, 2022

Tränen ohne Eros (Tears without Eros, 2022), belongs to Daniel Richter’s most recent series of paintings, a group of which were exhibited at the Museo Ateneo Veneto in Venice earlier this year. Treading the path between abstraction and figuration, Richter has formulated an idiosyncratic pictorial language in these new works.

His figures are linked together in violently distorted poses. He combines soft-edge multicoloured patches applied with a palette knife with stark contours in graphic strokes of oil crayon. Allowing his use of colour to structure the work, rather than line, the artist first paints the colour fields before outlining the composition. The metamorphosing bodies are consequently imbued with a sense of dynamism; the multipartiate nature of the composition giving the impression of ongoing bodily disintegration and reconstitution. ‘It’s more a question of systems of representation rather than portraying the body as a carnal, biological thing,’ explains Richter.