Gerhard Richter

Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich
Private Collection, Wiesbaden
Galerie Terminus, Munich
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Emden, Kunstalle, on extended loan, 2002-2005
Emden, Kunsthalle, Gerhard Richter. Neuzugänge, 2003
Munich, Galerie Terminus, Gerhard Richter. Sichtweise - schichtweise, 2006, p. 27, illustrated in colour

Angelika Thill, et al., Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné, 1962-1993, Ostfildern-Ruit 1993, Vol. III, no. 777-3, illustrated in colour
Anon., Punkt. Kunst im Nordwestern, 2003, p. 19, no. 3, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the tonality of the orange is brighter and more vibrant and the blacks are slightly softer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultra violet light.
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Exhibiting rich passages of painterly virtuosity, Abstraktes Bild of 1992 delivers a sublime effect of colouristic density, lyrical yet chaotic composition, and a certain aesthetic romance that is archetypal of Gerhard Richter's illustrious abstract works. The interplay of hues and the complex layering of impasto both reveal and conceal at the same time, inviting us to look both at and through the paint material. Within his phenomenally prolific output he created the present, gem-like Abstraktes Bild only shortly before the four monumental, three by three metre abstract canvases of the Bach suite, now housed in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. The rich and dense paint surface of this Abstraktes Bild, replete with chromatic resonance and architectural harmony, thus belongs to a significant moment in Richter's masterful career.

Contrary to the apparent immediacy of the painting's surface, this work is the result of Richter's systematic and remarkably methodical technique of scraping layers of paint across the canvas over an extended period of time. He begins by placing a number of primed white canvases around the walls of his studio, eventually working on several or all of them simultaneously. A soft ground of red, yellow, blue, or green is then applied only to be subsequently altered by large strokes: tracks of colour drawn out with the straight edge of a rubber squeegee. The painting undergoes multiple variations in which each new accretion brings colour and textural juxtapositions that are reworked until they are completely harmonized. With this Abstraktes Bild glossy layers of blues, greens and orange-reds have been smeared on the surface, squeezed into the perpendicular canvas weave, blended together before being partially scraped and scratched away.

Although initiated in 1976, it was not until the early 1990s that Richter's colossal project of gestural abstract painting developed out of an experimental exploration of visual communication into a more direct assertion of aesthetic principles. By this time the character of the Abstraktes Bild became invested with a confident legitimacy; the rigour of the prolific painter's flawless technique broadcasting something greater than mere painterly experimentation. Through an idiosyncratic combination of artistic instinct, technical dexterity and pure chance, Richter created paintings of stunning beauty. As he has himself explained, "I want to end up with a picture that I haven't planned. This method of arbitrary choice, chance, inspiration and destruction may produce a specific type of picture, but it never produces a predetermined picture...I just want to get something more interesting out of it than those things I can think out for myself." (the artist interviewed in 1990 in: Hubertus Butin, Stefan Gronert, and the Dallas Museum of Art, Eds., Gerhard Richter: Editions 1965 – 2004: Catalogue Raisonné, Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, p. 36). Indeed, with works such as the present Abstraktes Bild Richter's abstraction completely abandons all referents of the figurative world and affords the viewer a subjective sensory experience of phenomenological resonance.