GERHARD RICHTER | Schwefel (Sulphur)

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, New York
Private Collection, New York
Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco / Schönewald Fine Arts, Xanten
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2005

New York, Marian Goodman, Gerhard Richter, March 1985, n.p., illustrated in color
Düsseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle; Berlin, Nationalgalerie Berlin; Bern, Kunsthalle Bern; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art; Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; and San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gerhard Richter: Paintings, September 1988 - May 1989, p. 129, no. 65, illustrated in color

Gary Indiana, "Living with Contradictions," The Village Voice, March 26, 1985, p. 91, illustrated
Gerhard Richter: Bilder/Paintings 1962-1985, Düsseldorf, 1986, p. 320, no. 573/1, illustrated in color, p. 401 (text)
David Britt, ed., Modern Art: Impressionism to Post-Modernism, London, 1989, p. 403, illustrated in color
Gerhard Richter, Werkübersicht/Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, Bonn, 1993, p. 92, no. 573-1, illustrated in color
Guy Tosatto, "Gerhard Richter. Le sentiment d'avoir approché quelque chose de la réalité des apparences," Ninety, 1998, p. 15, no. 29, illustrated
Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 3: Nos. 389-651-2, (1976-1987), Ostfildern, 2013, p. 449, no. 573-1, illustrated in color

Bursting with exuberant color, gestural dynamism and compositional complexity, Gerhard Richter’s highly expressive Schwefel, produced in 1985, marks the genesis of the artist’s iconic Abstrakte Bilder; a body of work that revolutionized the historic progression of Western abstraction by injecting the weathered doctrine of formalism with much needed existential verve. Richter’s monumental painting, measuring over nine feet wide and six feet tall, immerses viewers in a pictorial adventure that leads them to contend with the mercuriality of paint. In Richter’s Schwefel, one observes a mature artist who, despite being a renowned skeptic of formalism, has clearly mastered the fundamental tenets of the medium. His varied techniques in manipulating paint, not merely for the sake of it, but as a means for representing an unknowable reality, imbue his Abstrakte Bilder with an indelible metaphysical dimension. Richter’s technical agility manifests with considerable force in Schwefel, evident in the translucent white plane that latitudinally bisects the painting’s upper-half area; the fragmented red and black squeegeed forms that occupy the work’s right side; and the broad brush-applied green gestural stroke that hovers in the painting’s center. Schwefel also showcases Richter’s high aptitude for composition, as the unperturbed yellow-green negative space on the left half of the canvas contrasts beautifully with the dynamism of the interacting variegated forms on the canvas’s right-half, establishing a dramatically resolved visual equilibrium. Moreover, by recalling Richter’s earlier abstract works of the 1970s and anticipating the entirely squeegeed paintings of the late 1980s, Schwefel presents itself as an open-ended negotiation of the artist’s widely celebrated styles.Schwefel was assiduously created over a period of several months, in tandem with other large abstract works present in Richter’s Cologne studio. As art historian, Roald Nasgaard notes: “Richter will begin a new group of paintings by placing a number of white canvases around the walls of his studio, eventually working on several or all of them at the same time “like a chessplayer simultaneously playing on several boards." (Roald Nasgaard, Gerhard Richter Paintings, Toronto, 1988, p. 108) Thereafter, Richter follows a meticulous process to realize his spectacular abstract compositions, of which Schwefel is a quintessential example. First, Richter applies a soft ground of color to the canvas, a deep earthy green in the case of the present work. Second, the artist alters this simple composition with a first form, such as “a large brush stroke, a track of color drawn out with a squeegee, a geometric shape.” (Ibid.) Gradually, the composition takes shape evolving through many stages, each stage giving rise to a unique ordering of colored forms. According to Richter, the painting is finished “when there is no more that I can do to them, when they exceed me, or they have something that I can no longer keep up with.” (Ibid.) Unlike the radical spontaneity seen in mid-century Abstract Expressionism, such as in Pollock’s drip paintings, Richter’s abstract paintings are constructed with great deliberation, exhibiting the artist’s utter dedication to the medium and process-driven approach. The artist’s protracted painting process also explains the dense layering of color that appears in the right-half of Schwefel. Richter, however, allows a certain degree of chance in his process. For example, his adept use of the squeegee, evident in the ethereal forms that dominate the right side of the canvas, mediate the unplanned effects of the instrument with the artist’s pictorial calculations. As the artist put it: “I control being spontaneous.” (Gerhard Richter quoted in Michael Danoff, Gerhard Richter Paintings, Toronto, 1988, p. 12)

Richter's entirely abstract vernacular first emerged in earnest in 1977, building upon the artist’s earlier photo-realist works produced in the previous decade. In the early phase of his career, Richter adopted a nihilistic worldview, using his art to model the elusiveness and uncertainty of reality. The photo-realist paintings, noteworthy for their blurred quality, allude to reality’s ambiguity and ephemerality, urge viewers to contemplate the nature of perception, and, in particular, the delicate relationship between what something is and how that thing is represented. In these early works, Richter emphasizes the importance of neutral, impersonal expression as an appropriate interrogation of the external world, hence his affinity for photographic visuals. However, in 1976, after he painted a series of grey monochrome paintings, Richter reached a critical turning point in his trajectory, switching focus from the reality of the external world to his inner world, the realm of his emotions and personality. As Richter states: “the abstract works are my presence, my reality, my problems, my difficulties and contradictions.” (Ibid., p. 9) Schwefel thus embodies a critical period in Richter’s oeuvre, one in which he shifts gears toward a completely abstract mode of painting, while retaining evidence of his earlier photo-paintings inthe blured haze of color gradation that dominates the lefthand part of this masterful canvas. Furthermore, expressionistic appearance of Schwefel represents Richter coming to terms with the unintelligibility of reality, deciding to celebrate the complexity and richness of life rather than acquiesce in existential despair. Viewed in this manner, each painting Richter produces functions as a conscious act of self-affirmation, a way to assure himself of his own existence, despite his uneasiness about the incomprehensibility of reality.

Schwefel occupies a fascinating, unprecedented, and almost paradoxical position in the art historical canon. Evoking the grandeur of historical genre paintings and the experimental rigor of the avant-garde, Richter’s work gracefully merges the traditional practice of painting with the vanguard sensibility of formal experimentation. Furthermore, Richter’s paintings engage in an unapologetic search for beauty, going against the postmodernist emphasis on irony and subversion. As the artist remarked: “’Beauty has become a downgraded word, but that shouldn’t be the case, because we would all like to be healthy, perfect, fulfilled – the opposite of war, crime and sickness. I see beauty in all the works we cherish.” (Gerhard Richter quoted in Michael Danoff, Gerhard Richter Paintings, Toronto, 1988, p. 12) These qualities gift Schwefel with a self-renewing timelessness, evidencing the artist’s conceptualist diligence, subtle romanticism and distinctive reworking of art history.

Conveying unspeakable but universally acknowledged truths, Richter’s Schwefel articulates the possibility for art to transcend its social context. In the artist’s words: “With abstract painting we create a better means of approaching what can neither be seen nor understood because abstract painting illustrates with the greatest clarity, that is to say, with all the means at the disposal of art, 'nothing'… we allow ourselves to see the un-seeable, that which has never before been seen and indeed is not visible.” (Gerhard Richter quoted in Roald Nasgaard, Gerhard Richter Paintings, Toronto, 1988, p. 107) Viewed from this perspective, Richter’s existentially oriented paintings daringly probe the epistemological boundaries of human existence. Playful in its extroverted color palette yet sincere in its philosophical commitments, Richter’s Schwefel is a testament to the artist’s inimitable skill and unyielding intellect.