Neatly limned ink drawings from 1981 declare the concepts on which his retro - Modernist, grid - based paintings have been based: they are schematic
renderings of prison cells that represent modern systems of dwelling, technology and communication as a vast, interconnected penitentiary of consciousness.
Translated in English as «Blanket,» Richter's work first
renders and then conceals an iconic photograph
of Gudrun Ensslin's hanged body in a
prison cell, an image that circulated widely in the German press after the alleged suicide
of the prominent Red Army Faction (RAF) radical in 1977.