Betty, Gerhard Richter, 1988

Betty is the title of this Gerhard Richter painting in oil on canvas. Created in 1988, Betty is based upon a photograph he took of his eleven-year-old daughter. Looking away, the girl turns towards what maybe another of Richter’s paintings. Richter mixes the softness of the girl’s features with the precise rendering of her flowered jacket in a work that blurs the distinctions between painting and photography.