The works of Gerhard Richter, who received his training at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, always address the never-ending interplay of reality, perception, and knowledge. With this painting, which was exhibited at the Biennale in 1972 and is one of a sequence of small works on the same motif, the artist reproduces just a portion of a floor-length curtain at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf and thus separates the representation from its real subject. The viewer is made to feel that he or she is looking at an abstract image of smeared vertical bands, which only acquires a concrete reference to its model through its title.