100 self-portraits, 1993

For the subscription edition of „Schriften und Interviews“, that was published by Insel Verlag in 1993 in an edition of 100 copies, Richter drew a 23.5 x 17.7 cm “self-portrait” in pencil on the back of a portrait photograph at the front of the book. Enthused by his work, he produced a further 94 signed and dated self-portraits between the 3rd of September and the 12th of December 1993 on loose leaves, which are published here for the first time. It is when they are seen together as a series that this brilliant exercise becomes impressive. Despite the means of production being largely the same or similar, each instance has an individual formal and aesthetic appearance. The pencil drawings form an open series of variations, whose aspiration is not the gradual nearing of a perfected final outcome, but rather the serial testing of different, but equally weighted possibilities of representation within limited specifications.