Gerhard Richter's portrait "Elisabeth (I)" from 1966 shows the British Queen Elizabeth II so blurred that one can only recognize her as a shadow, as if behind a veil of fog.
But she is, there's no doubt about it.
Because the image of herself that she knows how to convey perfectly in public is well known to us from mass-produced magazines.
Richter used a newspaper or magazine photo of the British monarch as a template for his offset print.
Catherine Deschka
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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In this way, the subject is still recognizable despite the blurring of the image.
And step back as an individual behind the public figure that she became when she became queen.
The interpretation of the work as an expression of an inner change only opened up to him at the exhibition in the Opelvillen, says Ingo Klöckler, who together with his wife Maria Lucia Klöckler has built up a collection of portraits of women over 30 years, with a total of 350 paintings, drawings and graphics and sculptures.
The couple has already had experience with the museum presentation of their collection.
The collection was presented at the Lehmbruck Museum in 2013 and at the Museum Sinclair-Haus in 2015, with the female figure as the main protagonist.
In the Opelvillen in Rüsselsheim, 75 works from the collection can now be seen under the new aspect of metamorphosis until July 31st.
"Daphne without Apoll - Metamorphoses from Richter to Lassnig from the Klöckler Collection" is the title of the show, which puts a topic in the foreground that Opelvillen manager Beate Kemfert almost imposed on herself when viewing the collection in preparation for the exhibition, such as she reports.
Klöckler, the Bad Homburg collector, thinks it's an ingenious concept: "It enabled us to discover how many works refer to transformations and changes."
Men are only marginal
Because Ovid has inspired the art world with his “Metamorphoses” since antiquity, Kemfert started with a bronze sculpture by Wolfgang Mattheuer.
His "Daphne" shows the nymph with her hands stretched out imploringly, her transformation into a laurel tree is almost complete.
It is particularly striking that in this depiction, unlike in Bernini's sculpture to which Mattheuer refers, the pursuer Apollo is missing.
This is programmatic for the exhibits.
Men appear only marginally, if at all.
For this reason, visitors to the first hall are greeted by the paintings “The Execution”, reminiscent of Egyptian papyrus scrolls, by Nancy Spero, the feminist artist who decided in the mid-1970s to only depict women.
A series of grotesque images of women's bodies is shown by the Austrian Maria Lassnig, who went to New York in 1968 and met Spero: the artist was concerned with depicting subjective body feelings.
A painting from 1991 by the Dresden painter Angela Hampel can be seen.
It shows a woman with a blood-red skull on her head.
Hampel is one of those artists who were already dealing with environmental protection, emancipation and feminism in the GDR era.
In addition to painters like Arno Rink and Werner Tübke, the show also features some artists from the former GDR who didn't appear very often in the West, says Kemfert, naming Ulrich Hachulla and Strawalde.
The similarities of the species
How the show tells of transformations in the narrower or broader sense is extremely stimulating to watch.
The narrative arc ranges from antiquity and biblical tales with works such as Damien Cabanes' "Judith visage vert" to the modern with drawings by Leonor Fini and Erich Gruber.
It ends in the present.
A lot revolves around the "common features of the species": Kiki Smith lets flower petals sprout from a woman's head, Juul Kraijer draws a naked woman whose skin is covered all over with butterflies.
These women's bodies are permeable – for nature and everything that happens around them.
Jürgen Brodwolf's "Idolfigur" (1982), a white-wrapped prosthetic leg that reports on human vulnerability in wars and catastrophes, is of unexpected topicality.
Just like Gottfried Helnwein's photorealistic painting "The Disasters of War 12" (2007) of a girl in uniform: the child looks at you seriously.
Is she just a victim or was she made into a perpetrator?
The title of the painting suggests something bad.
It is based on Francisco de Goya's etchings from the years 1810 to 1814, which show war crimes in Napoleon's soldiers fighting the Spanish population.
"Daphne without Apoll" can be seen in the Opelvillen Rüsselsheim, Ludwig-Dörfler-Allee 9, until July 31st. Opening times: Tuesday to Friday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.