Gerhard Richter

Onnasch Galerie, Berlin/Cologne

Collection Otto Haas, Elzach

Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin

Galerie Arno Kohnen, Dusseldorf 

Galerie Denise René Hans Mayer, Dusseldorf 

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1987

Berlin, Galerie René Block, Gerhard Richter: Städte, 1969 

Munich, Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Gerhard Richter – Städtebilder, 1970 

Berlin, Onnasch Galerie; and Cologne, Onnasch Galerie, 20 Deutsche, 1971, n.p., no. 50, illustrated 

Jürgen Harten, Gerhard Richter: Bilder 1962-1985, Cologne 1986, p. 69, no. 170-6, illustrated

Angelika Thill, et. al., Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, Vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit 1993, n.p., no. 170-6, illustrated in colour

Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1968, Vol. I, Ostfildern 2011, p. 342, no. 170-6, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is some minor canvas draw towards the top and lower right corners. Close inspection reveals some hairline cracks in places along the extreme edges and two minor paint losses: one to the extreme right edge towards the top corner and another to the left overturn edge approximately 15cm from the bottom corner. These are presumably original and are a result of the artist having apportioned down the original work into smaller sections. Further inspection reveals a stable diagonal feather crack to the centre left of the composition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In 1968 Gerhard Richter created two colossal paintings measuring 275 by 290 centimetres from black and white photographs of the centre of Milan. This choice of subject was informed by a major commission from the Siemens Corporation who had asked Richter to paint a typical Photo-Painting for their offices. Of the two works, one graced the walls of Siemens in Milan for 30 years, while the other was apportioned into 9 individual paintings that would constitute the very first works within Richter’s Townscape corpus. Entitled Stadtbild M 6, the present work counts among this formative number, of which the extant 8 reside in various collections across the globe including the Kunsthaus Nordrhein-Westfalen in Aachen, and the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie in Frankfurt. Prompted by this commission, Richter went on to create some 37 further Stadtbilder between 1968 and 1970; impressively from this number, almost half reside in museum collections. As a body of work the Stadtbilder augment the soft photographic blur of his trademark Photo Paintings through seemingly gesticular abandon. Herein, not only do these paintings broach the wider history of twentieth-century abstraction, they also speak to a landscape of urban rubble, evoking the devastation wrought by the bombing of major European cities during World War II. After acquiring the work in 1987, the present owners received a personal letter from the artist congratulating them on their acquisition, and the painting has remained in their collection ever since. Proceeds from this sale will be used to fund charities in the Arts and Sciences that the owners support.

By the late 1960s, Richter had entered an experimental phase in his career. Looking for a route out of his photo works, in 1964 he devised a series of monochromatic paintings echoing the appearance of curtains, tubes and corrugated iron, while in 1966 Richter started the series of colour charts. The Siemens commission thus prompted Richter to take an alternate and unanticipated direction away from his trademark blur. As he explains, “Sometimes I’ve enjoyed doing commissioned work, in order to discover something that I wouldn’t have found of my own accord. And so, when Siemens commissioned my first townscape that led to all the townscapes that followed” (Gerhard Richter quoted in: Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Cologne 2002, p. 158). Furthermore, it was only following the Townscapes that Richter began his most pronounced concession to anti-painting with the series of monochrome grey works – indeed, the very first Grau in Richter’s cataglogue raisonne is in fact the overpainted Stadtbild M 8 (grau) which also once belonged to the same colossal painting as the present work.

In preparation for the commission and in an attempt to assuage the pressure, Richter prepared two huge canvases safe in the knowledge that he could always start again. Stadtbild M 6 thus represents what was the top right corner of the first version of the Siemens commission. The artist’s decision to segment this vast painting quickly arrived owing to the nature of the marriage of gestural brushwork and the canvas’s monumental scale. Divided into nine, the city motif became reduced in scope, while its abstract quality was made more intense and un-familiar by fragmentation. Furthermore, when comparing this sequence of 9 with the original source image (an aerial photograph that can be viewed on sheet 119 of Richter’s archive/artwork Atlas) it is clear that the designated numbers of each painting are not sequential but are instead random; a device that serves to further disassociate the image from its representational and photographic origin. Occupying the same corner as the view portrayed in Domplatz, Mailand (the work that was eventually submitted to Siemens as the finished commission) the present work depicts the Piazza del Duomo in front of the Cathedral in which the equestrian monument of King Victor Emmanuel II resides. On such an intimate scale however identifying this specific locality is nigh-on impossible; landmarks and geographical clues dissipate into thick daubs and dabs of paint. Indeed, evocative of El Lissitzky’s abstract compositions which looked to present an interchange between architecture and painting, Stadtbild M 6 abstracts its subject through a geometric pattern of buildings that enclose the square and the diagonal thrust of the road that encircles it.

Within the series at large, Richter used aerial photographs of cities culled from 1960s architectural books and magazines. From these sources he translated black and white birds-eye views into painterly matrices of richly textured thick horizontal and vertical brushmarks. Seemingly incongruous to the measured application of his earlier Photo Paintings, the quickly applied brushstrokes nonetheless affect a comparable visual suspension between recognition and uncertainty. From a distance these scenes appear to resemble the super-real cogency of his previous corpus, but on closer inspection visual coherence entirely disintegrates into haphazard brushwork. The effect possesses something of the ‘all-over’ strategy pioneered by Abstract Expressionist painters in which a sense of perspective and focal point is repudiated in favour of a roving viewing experience.

While not mutually exclusive considering the social history behind the Ab Ex movement, the Stadtbilder have also been posited in terms of a response to the Second World War. Re-conjuring a dialogue with the history of inner-city destruction, these paintings signify a return of repressed national trauma. In Germany during the 1960s, so much energy was directed towards re-building and erasing traces of a troubled past that an acknowledgement of the bombings was greatly supressed in the nation’s collective memory. As Tate curator Mark Godfrey elucidates: “An extraordinary sequence of reversals takes place in the Townscapes. Richter started with aerial photographs that were made to document the rebuilding of cities after the war and to celebrate the achievements of architects, town planners and labourers… Rendering the images of rebuilt cities in his brushy impasto, he effectively re-destroyed the cities, albeit in the imaginary field of painting” (Mark Godfrey, ‘Damaged Landscapes’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Modern, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, 2011, p. 76). The significance of this connection was likely only apparent following the commission, however its relevance may explain the longevity of the project for Richter who continued to paint townscapes for a 2 further years. In a different light is also apt to note the concurrent execution of a number of works based on aerial photographs of mountain scenery. Painted in a similarly gestural manner, these works form pendent pieces to the Stadtbilder and question the binary division of nature/man-made. Although coming into focus at a distance, when viewed up-close such differences between the architecture of Man and Nature dissolve into a panorama exigent mark making.

Encompassing multifaceted lines of inquiry that encompass his most pioneering and conceptually inward-looking scrutiny of abstract painting in the photographic age, the present work, and the extant paintings in the series of incipient Stadtbilder, signal a decisive turning point in Richter’s formative practice.