Gerhard Richter

Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
Galeria Mário Sequeira, Braga
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2001

Exhibition Catalogue, London, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, Gerhard Richter, 1998, no. 845-1, n.p., illustrated in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Düsseldorf, K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Gerhard Richter, 2005, no. 845-1, illustrated in colour

The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original. This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"The paintings gain their life from our desire to recognise something in them. At every point they suggest similarities with real appearances, which then, however, never really materialize"

The artist in: Gerhard Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews, 1962-1993, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1995, p. 245

Affording a stunningly vibrant visual experience, Abstraktes Bild is an outstanding exemplar of Gerhard Richter's epic corpus of Abstract Paintings. Its intensely beautiful chromatic expanse belongs to an exclusive series of warm-hued abstract paintings of this date, one of which is now housed in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. Seeping layers of brilliantly charged hues are dramatically scattered across the canvas, alternatively coalescing and dissolving to defy conventional colour schema, and overlaying a soft ground of citrus yellow, jade, turquoise and crimson harmoniously blended into chromatic unison, sporadic horizontal lines of luscious impasto in warm golden ochres cascade down the picture plane. These lyrically streaking strata inject the composition with sculptural impasto accents, forging a dense, polychromatic paint fabric and the perfect formation of what Dietmar Elger calls an "impasto carpet of iridescent colour" (Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2009, p. 267). The dense layering of colours and textures draws our eye to absorb different material and chromatic depths at the same time, which parallels the multi-layered conceptual depth of the work. With arbitrary chance a defining trait of its execution, the painterly triumph ofAbstraktes Bild stands as independent of the artist and acquires its own autonomous identity.

Richter had pioneered abstract painting throughout the 1980s and this work concludes almost twenty years of his investigation into various methodical, aesthetic and conceptual possibilities. The result of the artist's phenomenal technical aptitude, which has led to his reputation as one of the outstanding painters of our era, Abstraktes Bild  is testament both to his ceaseless explorations in the field of abstraction and to his unique painterly and intellectual sophistication. Having first enlisted the smooth aluminium-composite surface as painting support in the previous year, Richter's epic reassessment of materials and technique here again presented new possibilities. The metal substrate fundamentally affects the drying qualities of the oil paint: without the porous fibre of canvas to soak into, the oil medium takes very significantly longer to evaporate and the pigment itself maintains its potency preserved on the impermeable metal surface. Thus in the present Abstraktes Bild  the stunning composition and sculptural surface is augmented by the painting's sheer chromatic power. The paint surfaces are laid down through a structured process, beginning with the soft grounds being blended together before an enormous process of application and removal of paint using a large rubber squeegee finally results in a satisfactory result. Dependent on applied pressure and material viscosity, the use of the squeegee prevents the dispersion of the paint being precisely controlled by the artist, and thus posits coincidence and accident at the kernel of this painting.

Gerhard Richter's multifarious canon has consistently addressed contemporary objections to painting and incorporated them into the works that he creates, thereby renewing the relevance and conceptual vitality of painting in a fundamentally post-Modern and current way. According to Elger, this means that "different strategic paths open up that allow him to continue painting even after the 'end of painting'" (Ibid., p. 168). From this perspective it is also important to assess Richter's ubiquitous title Abstraktes Bild. As Robert Storr has written: "The choice of title is significant in that it reinforces the impression conveyed by the illusionistic description of shoals, riptides, and cresting waves of pigment" (Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Museum of Modern Art, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, 2002, p. 68-9). In this way, Abstraktes Bild  graduates beyond the long and illustrious precedent of Abstract Expressionism with which Richter's corpus is often compared. Due to his inimitable technique, it is not Richter's gesture that remains on the metal substrate, but the result of endless construction and deconstruction and finally the gesture of chance. With brilliant post-Modern conceptual economy and offering sophisticated levels of interpretation,Abstraktes Bild extends the realm of gestural painting. It invites the viewer to re-examine the conceptual and material solidity of their visual experience, while simultaneously standing as a supremely arresting and seductive work of art.