''Rhein'', also known as ''Rhein I'', is a colour photograph created by the German photographer

Andreas Gursky Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his large format architecture and landscape colour photographs, often using a high point of view. His works ...

in 1996. The photograph had a six copies edition. This was the first version of a photograph that become better known with his second version, '' Rhein II'', in 1999. The photograph was created using digital manipulation, which removed several human references, including people and buildings. The final result, showing the river flowing across green fields, beneath a blue cloudy sky, has similarities with the abstract paintings of Barnett Newman. Peter Galassi stated that: "Behind Gursky's taste for the imposing clarity of unbroken parallel forms spanning a slender rectangle lies a rich inheritance of reductivist aesthetics, from Friedrich to Newman to Richter to

Donald Judd Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...

... (with) images that read like horizontal versions of Newman paintings." This version has less vivid colors and a narrower field of vision than '' Rhein II''. Three prints of this photograph are among the most expensive ever sold. A print was sold by $2,098,500 at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

, New York, at 10 May 2011, and another by $1,925,000 at Phillips, at 16 May 2013. A third sold by $1,805,000 at

, New York, at 12 November 2014.Rhein, at Sotheby's Catalogue
/ref> A print of the photograph is held at the Samsung Museum of Art, in

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...

References

{{Authority control Color photographs Rhine Landscape photographs 1996 in art 1990s photographs Photographs by Andreas Gursky