Lot 43
  • 43

Gerhard Richter

Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Gerhard Richter
  • Untitled
  • signed and dated 1970 on the reverse
  • oil on canvas
  • 60 by 80cm.
  • 23 5/8 by 31 1/2 in.

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1971

Catalogue Note

Fluctuating between realist and abstract modes of expression, Richter here deconstructs the very act of painting and exposes its hidden truths. Executed in 1970 when he was just beginning to explore wholly abstract compositions, Untitled bridges the gap between his representational ‘photopaintings’ of the previous decade and this painterly ‘Abstraktes bild’. Since the early 1960s Richter had mined the rich seam between figuration and abstraction for inspiration, blurring the boundaries of his black and white source images through painting to underline the illusion and abstract nature of all representation.

 

Here as in Tante Marianne and Lis Kertelge (see lots 6 and 27), his examination is backed by a masterful ability that enables him to make paint do exactly as he wants. Uniting figurative and abstract concerns within a single image, Untitled brings together two of his most iconic mature motifs: the cloud and the purely abstract gesture. Epitomising the scientific detachment and ambivalence with which he has scrutinized his chosen medium, in the present work, he emphasises that it is only through our familiarity with motifs that a mottled pattern of ethereal blue and white tones can come together and be read as a cloud. He challenges our ability to do this by the dramatically imposed impasto brush mark which darts boldly across the centre of the flat composition. Sitting at either ends of the visual and technical spectrum, this stark juxtaposition of figurative and abstract gestures enhances their differences whilst also pointing to their innate similarities. In subverting the coherency of the pictorial field and its ability as a mimetic, image carrying space, Richter questions the role of art and its contemporary relevance by showing the true nature of representational painting to be as fleeting and temporal as a single brushstroke.