Gerhard Richter

Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1991

Angelika Thill et. al., Gerhard Richter, Catalogue Raisonné: 1962-1993, Vol. III, Osternfildern-Ruit 1993, no. 609-2, illustrated in colour

Colours: The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration, although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original. The catalogue illustration fails to convey the beautifully textured surface in the original. Condition: The work is in very good condition. There are tiny and unobtrusive paint losses to the extreme tips of the bottom two and top left hand corners and a further one to the right centre of the extreme bottom edge. There are two very faint rub marks towards the top and bottom extreme right edge. 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."

"Accustomed to recognising real things in paintings, we refuse, justifiably, to consider colour alone (in all its variation) as what the painting reveals, and instead allow ourselves to see the unseeable... Paintings are all the better, the more beautiful, intelligent, crazy and extreme, the more clearly perceptible and the less decipherable metaphors they are for this incomprehensible reality. Art is the highest form of hope."
Gerhard Richter in Exhibition Catalogue, Kassel, Documenta 7, 1982, p. 443

Gerhard Richter's transition from figurative to abstract painting posed a fundamental artistic challenge to the artist.  Up to this point in his career he had been concerned with making 'photographs out of oil paint', engaging the viewer with the dichotomy between fiction and reality. In his subsequent abstract works, however, he explores the gap between perception and conception, moving instead from object clarity towards free painterly expression.  Richter's oeuvre does, however, hinge on the connection - and distinction - between figuration and abstraction; Abstraktes Bild should therefore be seen as a continuation and expansion of Richter's aesthetic quest to distil reality and objectivity from his chosen subjects.

Superficially dreamlike in character, the surface of Abstraktes Bild is gradually and purposefully built from an array of referential marks.  The ground is built of a modulated photographically-based space, which echoes his earlier and purer "Smooth" abstracts of the late seventies. Onto the ordered perfection of this ground, Richter has applied bold swathes of colour, dragging, brushing, dripping and streaking the brilliant hues of pigment across the pictorial field, heightening their intrinsic malleability and accentuating the gestural application. This vocabulary of marks is powerfully orchestrated by Richter: smooth sonorous strokes of yellow are punctured by agitated layers of radiant red, the intense tonal warmth relieved by a calming interlude of cool blue and turquoise in the lower left corner. The thick impasto is built in deliberate layers of sumptuous oil, Richter once again showing his technical brilliance as he pushes his medium to its ultimate expression.  We are taken on a journey through a myriad of colour, the crystalline purity of the jewel-like pigments almost blinding in their luminescence.

By creating a work of almost tangible beauty, Richter purposefully avoids a prescribed aesthetic experience. Struck by the pure essence of pictorial beauty and intelligence, the viewer falls under the spell of Abstraktes Bild, seduced by its refusal to abide by aesthetic rules.  Its negation of symmetry, colour harmony and constructive unity all come to embody the ultimate painterly experience.