Gerhard Richter ( 1932- ) 3 important works sold in Christie's.

gerard van weyenbergh
May 29
3 min read

Abstraktes Bild exhibits that rare simultaneity of smooth wet-on-wet brush-strokes and studded surfaces, which come from great pulls of Richter’s squeegie across a dry field. The myriad of façades that arise—where for example, a layer of viridian green is pried open to reveal sudden bursts of cadmium yellow—allow under-layers to assert their chromatic dominance, drawing into recession what a moment earlier had stunned the eye. What begins as a series of layers built up becomes, in the end, layers broken away to reveal the essence of their making.

Sold Christie's $ 31M in 2014

Abstraktes Bild (648-3)

signed, numbered and dated 'Richter 1987 648-3' (on the reverse)

oil on canvas

88 3/4 x 78 3/4 in. (225.4 x 200 cm.)

Painted in 1987.

Executed in 1989, Abstraktes Bild hails from the finest period in Richter’s abstraction and is a key example of this abstract style that would become synonymous with the artist and that he would return to time and again throughout his career. These works dating from 1988 through 1992 are the product of a long investigation into the possibilities of painting spanning more than five decades and are the purest articulation of the artist’s improvised technique. Alongside his abstract works Richter had begun to develop other models for the examination of visual perception: the slightly abstracted Landscapes, the Photopaintings, the Panes of Glass, the Mirrors, the Grey paintings and the Colour Charts all represented, in different ways, the artist’s direct examination of the mechanics of painting. As he has stated: ‘Every time we describe an event, add up a column of figures or take a photograph of a tree, we create a model; without models we would know nothing about reality and would be like animals’ (G. Richter, quoted in ‘Interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, 1986, in H. Ulrich Obrist (ed.), The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London 1993, p. 132).

Sold in Christie's GBP 19 M in 2014

Abstraktes Bild

signed, numbered and dated ‘709 Richter 1989’ (on the reverse)

oil on canvas

102.1/8 x 78.7/8in. (259.4 x 200.3cm.)

Painted in 1989

Painted in 1994, Abstraktes Bild is a sumptuous example of the artist’s comprehensive interrogations of the painted surface. Executed on a monumental scale, in the present work Richter choreographs a prismatic array of jewel-like hues across the surface of the canvas. With careful sweeps of his brush—and even more stringent manipulations of the pigment using his hard-edged plastic squeegee—the artist lays down seams of vibrant, unadulterated color. Passages of primary red, blue and yellow coalesce throughout the composition, resulting in bottomless pools of saturated color. At their edges, where they come into contact with neighboring passages of color, they transition into activated areas that fizz with energy. Like Rothko’s floating fields of pigment, it is here where pigment coalesces with pigment that the visual energy present in the best examples of Richter’s work can most acutely be seen. The arduous process of applying, and then scraping off, consecutive layers of paint results in an intricate surface of infinite detail: thick impasto sits alongside thin veneers of paint that are so gossamer thin as to reveal the texture of the warp and weft of the underlying canvas. Traces of the broad sweep of the squeegee, are then disrupted by the thin furrows of a sharp implement dragged across the wet surface. The sum of all these parts is a fantastically intricate and highly advanced painted surface, and as such Abstraktes Bild stands as an exemplary examples of Richter’s practice and his investigations in the physical act of painting and the very nature of paint itself.