Gerhard Richter

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Los Angeles
Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York (acquired directly from the above)

Nîmes, Musée d' Art Contemporain de Nîmes, Gerhard Richter: 100 Pictures, 1996, n.p. no. 825-12, illustrated in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Gerhard Richter, Catalogue Raisonné for the
Paintings 1993-2004, 2005, no. 825-12, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly softer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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"The abstract paintings have to be constructed like a piece of nature. They have to be coherent. That's why you go on working away at them for so long."

Gerhard Richter in conversation with Nicholas Serota in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, 2011, p. 17

"In the case of the abstractions, I get vague notions of pictures that are just asking to be painted. That's how it starts, but nearly always the result is not at all what I imagined."

Gerhard Richter in conversation with Nicholas Serota in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, 2011, p. 16

 

Executed in 1995, Abstraktes Bild (852-12) is a spectacular example from Gerhard Richter's celebrated series of abstract paintings. With an arresting palette of dove grey streaked with seductive flashes of onyx black, the surface of this painting is regularly interrupted to reveal tantalising glimpses of raspberry red and lush green beneath. Although seeming spontaneous in their lyrical application, these marks are in fact the result of careful orchestration, built up from robust sweeps of thick impasto. This painting is a testament to Richter's constant technical explorations in the field of abstraction, and attests to the painterly and intellectual invention unique to his work.

Abstraktes Bild is characterised by an atmosphere of limitless depth, colouristic harmony and lyrical tonal rhythms. The interplay of colours and the complex layering of the pigment are deliberately ambiguous, seeming to both reveal and conceal at the same time. Richter deliberately obscures any area which might give even a subliminal sense of horizon or object – an embodiment to his belief that what we think of as reality is ultimately as fictitious as painting: that both are mere models of understanding the world. The dynamic colours he uses enhance this artificiality, as does the application of painting which is smooth, leaving little evidence of the artist's involvement. Unlike the energetic marks of the action painter, here the layers of colour are painstakingly built in cool, detached objectivity. Richter works on several painting concurrently, moving from one to the other, thus constantly refreshing his vision and removing any sense of narrative or illustration form the works. Creating using an array of different tools and instruments – from brushes and palette knives to squeegees and planks of wood – the surface of Abstraktes Bild evokes the diverse processes applied to it, and the intellectual rigour which was applied to these processes.

Richter's technique affords an element of chance that is necessary to facilitate the artistic ideology of the abstract works. As the artist 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 pre-determined 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 19990 in: Hubertus Butin, Stefan Gronert, and the Dallas Museum of Art, Eds., Gerhard Richter: Editions 1965-2004, Catalogue Raisonné, Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, p. 36). Although constructed to remain devoid of any explicit meaning, the kaleidoscopic jewel-like reds, greys and greens of Abstraktes Bild reveal Richter's innate colouristic sensitivity. Despite their appearance, the colours have not been juxtaposed by chance, frenetic gesture, but with the careful analysis of what emotional response these juxtapositions would provoke. This degree of control echoes the subtle manipulation of his photo paintings, which - though based on a source image – were frequently enhanced or edited to affect their appeal to the viewer. With Abstraktes Bild, Richter artfully controls the composition through careful contrasts of colour and form, deconstructing the act of painting itself through his supreme and instantly recognisable technique.