Gerhard Richter

Galleria Mario Pieroni, Rome
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1989

Cologne, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Aus meiner Sicht, 1989
Rome, Galleria Mario Pieroni, Sol LeWitt / Gerhard Richter, 1989-90

 

Angelika Thill, et al., Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, Ostfildern-Ruit 1993, Vol. III, no. 689-1, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer in the original. Condition: This works is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals a few minor, short and stable hairline cracks towards the top left corner. No restoration is apparent under ultra-violet light.
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"By not planning the outcome, I hope to achieve the same coherence and objectivity that a random slice of nature (or a readymade) always possesses" (the artist cited in: Achim Borchardt-Hume, 'Richter's Abstract Paintings of the Late 1980s', Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Modern, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, 2011, p. 171).

The ethereal colouristic harmony and lyrical resonance of Grat I espouses an atmosphere of density, chaos and understated splendour. The interplay of hues and the complex layering of thick impasto are deliberately ambiguous, seeming both to reveal and conceal at the same time: the viewer is invited to look both at and through veils of textural materiality and laminas of chromatic tonality. The poetic tension between sombre blue/grey contrasted against warmly radiating swathes of white, emanates a melancholic beauty; jewel-like exposures of red, sapphire blue and sunset orange invoke a painterly magnificence forged via phenomenal technical and esoteric aptitude. Indeed, the very pursuit of Richter's Abstract inquiry has cemented his reputation as one of the outstanding painter of our era: Grat I is a superlative testimony to Richter's ceaseless technical explorations in the field of Abstraction and to the painterly and intellectual elasticity unique in his work.

Richter initially confronted abstract painting when he executed a group of vivacious and colourful sketches in 1976, and thus this work stems from well over a decade of his investigation of various technical and aesthetic abstract possibilities. The execution of the Abstrakt Bilder, which to the present day still occupy the mainstay of Richter's painterly inquiry, stand as the most complex challenge of his career. Their production necessitates substantial lengths of time to obviate the dominance of any singular creative identity. The movement and application of the squeegee, Richter's principle tool, is intellectually scrutinised in an unpredictable call and response between determined agency and indeterminate result. Herein, Richter's abstract works are the true summation of a creative journey, trapping in their layers the shadows of an arduous cerebral process and wrought experience.

Richter's technique affords an element of chance that is necessary to facilitate the artistic ideology of the abstract works. As the artist 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). With circumstance as a defining trait of its execution, the painterly triumph of Grat I is a result of the dialectic between artistic agency and capricious painterly autonomy, acquiring inimitable individuality as the product of creative coincidence.

Grat I perfectly embodies Richter's theory of Abstraction for which "there is no order, everything is dissolved, [it is] more revolutionary, anarchistic" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Gerhard Richter: Paintings, 1988, p. 108). His Abstract Paintings are designed to have a non-identity whereby the total deconstruction of perception - interrogating and dismantling themes of representation, illusion, communication - engender a sublime chaos. And yet with Grat I, the poetical descent of trailed and skimmed chromatic layers, in alignment with the photographic blur of his earliest Photo Paintings, at once suspends signification and invites recognition, propagating a visual reality "which we can neither see nor describe but which we may nevertheless conclude exists" (the artist in: Exhibition Catalogue, Documenta 7: Gerhard Richter, 1982, n. p.).