Peter Dreher

Tag um Tag guter Tag (Day by Day, good Day), No. 2037 (Night), 2003

Peter Dreher (German, 1932-2020), Tag um Tag guter Tag (Day by Day, good Day), No. 2037 (Night), 2003, oil on linen, 10 x 8 in. Schwartz Art Collection, Harvard Business School, 2018.8. Peter Dreher © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Peter Dreher has painted more than 5,000 pictures of the same empty water glass since 1974. This painting is from his ongoing magnum opus Tag um Tag guter Tag, which depicts the same glass painted by day and by night under the exact same conditions. These works may at first appear to be identical but each painting is unique with individual differences in light, shadow, color, and reflection in the glass. As Dreher has stated about the series, “for me, the deliberate restriction to the same motif is not a sacrifice, neither is it based on the idea of creating a particularly crazy concept to increase my recognisability or to distinguish myself from my colleagues. I chose what is deemed to be a restriction in order to focus all my energy on what is really important and crucial for me: painting.” There are two other paintings from this series in the Schwartz Art Collection. See Nr. 2037 and Nr. 2066.