格哈德·里希特

Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1991

London, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, Gerhard Richter Mirrors, 1991, pl. 5, illustrated in colour

Angelika Thill, et. al., Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné 1962 - 1993, Vol. III, Ostfildern Ruit 1993, no. 716-18/19/20/21, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is lighter and more vibrant in the original works. Condition: These works are in very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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First shown together as an ensemble alongside many of Gerhard Richter’s most spectacular works, the present four paintings represent the artist’s on-going investigation into the nature and potential of abstract painting. Abstrakte Bilder was originally part of Richter’s 1991 exhibition, Mirrors, held at Anthony d’Offay, in which the abstract works were exhibited alongside a number of diverse yet thematically linked paintings including Richter’s conceptual Four Panes of Glass from 1967, the famous Photo Painting of Richter’s daughter Betty from 1988, and a selection of Mirrors and Grey Paintings. Curated together these works illustrated the holistic nature of Richter’s oeuvre, while demonstrating the power of his abstract techniques, a facet readily apparent across the present four canvases. Numbered 716-18 through to 21, these intimately scaled paintings collectively act as an intriguing exemplar of Richter’s abstract painterly language. Imbued with sweeping grey tonalities punctuated with opalescent underlayers of crimson, green and blue, these works allow an insight into Richter’s creative practices, highlighting his ability to work simultaneously on several canvases in order to preserve the overall unity of Abstrakte Bilder. Indeed, displayed together, the appearance of these works as a whole marks a rare opportunity to fully appreciate the inner workings of Richter’s method - the product of which is today considered among the highest artistic achievements of the late Twentieth Century.

Since the very outset of his career during the early 1960s, Richter has called into question the conceptual underpinnings of painting and representation. Encompassing a variety of disparate yet thematically related painterly approaches, Richter’s career represents a cumulative inquiry into representation and abstraction in painting: positioned at the vanguard of this continuing project are the Abstrakte Bilder. As illustrated by the present works, Richter’s exploration into the field of abstraction stands distinct from both the formal and chromatic sparseness of minimalism, and the impassioned gestures of abstract expressionism. Rather, evoking the aesthetic blur of photography and immaculate cibachrome lamina of the print, Richter’s semi-automated procedure of repeatedly drawing layers of paint across the canvas with the squeegee results in a sense of harmonic painterly equilibrium.

Richter initially confronted abstract painting when he executed a group of vivacious and colourful sketches in 1976; created in 1991, the present group of small scale abstract works stem from over a decade of investigation into various technical and aesthetic abstract possibilities. The production of the Abstrakte Bilder, which to the present day still occupy the mainstay of Richter's painterly inquiry, stand as the most complex challenge of his career to date. The movement and application of the squeegee,  visible in layered sweeps across the delicate tonalities of the present ensemble, indicates the true dedication of Richter’s painterly process, leading to intriguing gradations in texture and tonality. As the present works attest, Richter's abstract corpus stands as the true summation of an endlessly perpetuating creative journey.

Each individual quarter of Richter's Abstrakte Bilder is strikingly beautiful in its concentrated, miniature format. Emanating from a deep and clear understanding of the complexities of painterly abstraction in its varying illustrations, these four works embody a nuanced and ambiguous response to such formal tensions and their contrasting histories. Richter's abstraction wavers between a simultaneous negation and affirmation of the ineffability of the beyond, an idea elegantly suggested  within the layers of arresting pigment that seem to give way to glimmers of an entirely alternate visual plane behind a diaphanous painterly screen: "somewhere you can't go, something you can't touch" (the artist in interview with Nicolas Serota, in Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Modern, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, 2011, p. 19). Ultimately Abstrakte Bilder– taken as the sum of its parts - is a masterful example of Richter’s investigations into the possibilities of pure painting: a celebration of the exciting potentials of a medium in which the artist is utterly in control.