Lilies

Gerhard Richter is renowned for his highly realistic paintings in the traditional genres of landscape, still life, vanitas and portraiture, which he blurs by dragging a large brush or squeegee over the canvas. He thus disrupts the figurative quality of the image, drawing attention to the painted surface and the act of painting as a form of representation. In his still-life Lilies, Richter depicts a bouquet of white candidum lilies, commonly included in scenes of the Annunciation as a symbol for the purity of the Virgin Mother. With the deployment of his signature streaking technique, the image of the lilies verges on abstraction. For Richter, the beauty and power of the image are paramount, and the lily has become a significant emblem in many of his works.