Gerhard Richter

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1990

Angelika Thill et al., Gerhard Richer Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, Vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit 1993, p. 189, no. 716-17

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is much brighter and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work it in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Executed in 1990, this work is a sensuously dark and enigmatic testament to the visual power of Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bilder, which are indisputably the crowning achievement of the artist's oeuvre. Richter first began exploring the intellectual possibilities of gestural abstraction in the 1970s, where his vigorous yet lyrical responses to nature broke the traditional mould of expressionist art and set the stage for an artist who would come to define abstract painting.

The present work is executed in the mature period of the artist's career, and at a time when Richter had fully developed his unique and mesmerising squeegee technique. The process he employs is at once methodical and yet serendipitous, and is exhibited here in rainbow flashes of striking colour which ripple below dark black veils of paint. Characteristically the artist worked on several pieces at a time, each placed around the walls of his studio, to which he systematically applied layers of opaque paint. Each painting undergoes several incarnations in this way, changing in colour texture and composition in a series of kaleidoscopic juxtapositions.

The intimate size of the present work draws the viewer closer to the picture plane, where the deceptively minimal composition starts to offer up its secrets and reveal the warm harmony of tones below the surface. On this scale the textured layers of paint form a central focus and the furrowed edges that peel back from the canvas become an area of intense study.

Although Richter's works are constructed to remain devoid of any meaning or specific reference, the uninhibited use  of slick oil-like black in this example subliminally triggers an emotive response, conveying an air of malaise which operates in the gap between the sensual exuberance of the vivid red and blue, and the oppressive use of black. In this way Richter's capabilities of painterly expression encapsulated in this work transcend the visual and move us to understand our primal relationship with colour and by extension the world around us.