GERHARD RICHTER | Stadtbild Sa (Townscape Sa)

Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne 
Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1970)
Private Collection, Germany
Sotheby’s, London, 7 February 2002, Lot 13 (consigned by the above) 
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Aachen, Gegenverkehr e.V. Zentrum für aktuelle Kunst, Gerhard Richter, March - April 1969
Lucerne, Kunstmuseum Luzerne, Düsseldorfer Szene, June - July 1969, n.p., no. 51 
Munich, Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Gerhard Richter - Städtebilder, April - May 1970

Exh. Cat., Venice, La Biennale di Venezia, German Pavillion, Gerard Richter, May - October 1972, n.p., no. 218-1, illustrated (incorrectly numbered)
Exh. Cat. (and catalogue raisonné), Dusseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (and travelling), Gerhard Richter: Bilder/Paintings 1962-1985, 1986, p. 96, no. 219-3, illustrated, and p. 373 (text) 
Exh. Cat. (and catalogue raisonné), Bonn, Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Gerhard Richter: 1962-1993, Vol. III, 1993-94, n.p., no. 219-3, illustrated
Dietmar Elger, Ed., Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonné 1968-1976, Vol. II, Berlin 2017, p. 123, no. 219-3, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the illustration fails to fully convey the impasto brushwork in the original. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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“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: Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern (and travelling), Gerhard Richter: Panorama, 2011-12, p. 76. Stadtbild Sa (Townscape Sa) forms part of Gerhard Richter’s series of Stadtbilder, a body of work that marks a crucial turning point in Richter’s oeuvre, namely the moment at which the artist made a departure from photo-painting and moved towards a more abstract, painterly approach. Created between 1968 and 1970, the small series of Stadtbilder comprises 47 paintings, almost half of which today reside in important museum collections. The series at large falls into two categories: those based on birds-eye aerial photographs of major cities executed in expressive and impasto brushstrokes of grayscale, and those based on photographs taken of architectural models. Belonging to the latter, Stadtbild Sa and its sister paintings present an almost minimalistic counterpoint to the expressive abandon of paintings that summon bombed European cityscapes in the fall-out of the Second World War. In contrast, the clean lines, rigid geometry and regulated town planning redolent in paintings such as Stadtbild Sa distill a mood of post-war optimism; the devastation present in the aerial-photo cityscapes is here replaced by plans to rebuild war-damaged Germany.

In 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: Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern (and travelling), Gerhard Richter: Panorama, 2011-12, p. 76).

The Stadtbilder were first conceived in response to a major commission from the Siemens Corporation who asked Richter to paint a large-scale work for their Milan office. Richter took this commission as an opportunity to abandon the blurred yet photographic painterly style which had first made his reputation as an artist. While still employing photographs for his base motif, the artist started to create a monumental abstract painting of Milan's cathedral square using thickly impastoed brushstrokes. Even though Siemens had requested a painting in the photo-realist style of his previous work, Richter instead replaced his blurred, out-of-focus figuration with a gestural abstraction of grey-scale daubs and dashes. Unsatisfied with the outcome of this large-scale painting, however, Richter eventually dissected the canvas into nine smaller works – these paintings marked the very beginning of the Stadtbilder and introduced a completely new pathway for Richter’s practice. Although the artist went on to create a second painting for the Siemens commission, which was to become the iconic Cathedral Square, Milan (Domplatz, Mailand), the earlier experimentation had imparted a new, objective yet painterly style in which Richter would continue to work for the next two years.

From a distance, works from this series present a discernible arrangement of houses viewed from a high view-point; however, upon approaching the canvas, these marks progressively morph into thickly applied abstract brushstrokes. A departure from the blurred yet figurative subjects of Richter’s earlier works, the Stadtbilder stand on the cusp between figuration and abstraction. Commenting on the supposed neutrality of the Stadtbilder, Richter explained that these paintings were intended as a “rejection of interesting content and illusionist painting. A spot of paint should remain a spot of paint, and the motif should not project meaning or allow any interpretation” (Gerhard Richter cited in: Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2009, p. 158). In its move towards gradual abstraction, the Stadtbilder can be viewed as means to leave the figurative reality of his earlier paintings, and their associated, preconceived, interpretations, behind. A depiction of an anonymous and, likely, fictional city, the present work is almost dreamlike in its faceless sterility and pared back lines, an effect underlined by the work’s facture: here characterless buildings dissipate into thick applications of paint. Evocative of El Lissitzky’s abstract compositions which looked to present an interchange between architecture and painting, Stadtbild Sa abstracts its subject through geometric pattern and grayscale.

Signalling a decisive change in Richter’s practice which introduced a progressive shift away from blurred figuration and a move towards abstraction, the Stadtbilder ushered in a new approach to gestural painting as subject to the objectivity of photography. A hallmark within this important series, the present work is as conceptually rigorous as it is aesthetically enthralling.