48 Portraits (1971/72) is a series of paintings that were first shown in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 1972. Richter presented these portraits, hung in a line, all at the same level, and ordered according to the position of the head, with a sequence of gazes that fanned out from the centre to the left and right. These painterly images, based on the black and white reproductions in encyclopaedias, came out after having excluded pictures of artists, women and politicians from a selection of 288 original photographs chosen by Richter for another, previous work.
The work is on loan from Museum Ludwig in Cologne, from April 2008 through October 2009, in exchange for the De Pont's Hermes Trismegistos by Sigmar Polke, which is on view in Cologne during that period.