Beschreibung:

11 A Tale of Two Cities: Property from the Estate of Howard Karshan Gerhard Richter Follow Busch (Scrub) signed, titled and dated 'BUSCH Richter 1985' on the reverse oil on canvas 65.2 x 80.2 cm (25 5/8 x 31 5/8 in.) Painted in 1985.
Provenance Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich Acquired from the above by the late owner Exhibited New York, Museum of Modern Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Gerhard Richter Forty Years of Painting , 14 February 2002 - 20 May 2003, pp. 71, 197 (illustrated, p. 197) Literature Gerhard Richter Bilder Paintings 1962-1985 , exh. cat., Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Nationalgalerie Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz; Kunsthalle Bern; Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst/ Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1986, no. 572-7, pp. 401, 318 (illustrated p.318, titled Busch (Skizze). Boskage (Sketch) , p. 401) Benjamin Buchloh, ed., Gerhard Richter Werkübersicht Catalogue raisonné 1962-1993 , vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1993, no. 572-7, p. 178 (illustrated) Siri Hustvedt, 'Double Exposure', in Modern Painters , Summer 2002, p. 53 (illustrated) Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter Malerei , Ostfildern, 2002, p. 197 (illustrated) Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter Doubt and Belief in Painting , New York, 2003, p. 112 Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter Landscapes , Ostfildern, 2011, p. 23 Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné , vol. III, nos. 389 - 651-2, 1976-1987, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2013, no. 572-7, p. 448 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay Busch , a frenzy of painterly abstraction, is a prominent composition from Gerhard Richter’s abstract practice. The tactile terrain, composed of a maelstrom of earthy brushstrokes, is a celebration of the artist’s masterful gestural and colouristic intervention. The bold, rich streaks of impasto embody Richter’s career long investigations into the formal possibilities of painting, one of the most extensive enquiries into the bounds of abstraction. Having taken his first steps towards abstraction in 1961-62, following his move from East to West Germany, Richter’s painterly style shifted radically from Social Realism and towards photo realistic painting. Stimulated by the debates of his fellow Capitalist Realist artist’s, Sigmar Polke Konrad Lueg (later Konrad Fischer), Manfred Kuttner and Joseph Beuys Richter wanted to ‘start from scratch’ (Gerhard Richter quoted in Michael Kimmelman, ‘Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms’, New York Times Magazine , 27 January 2002, p. 44) and destroyed almost all his work in a bonfire in the courtyard of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Anticipating his later abstract paintings such as the present work, in 1962 Richter painted his seminal canvas, Tisch (Harvard Art Museum, Boston), which he later placed first in his catalogue raisonné, despite the fact that this was chronologically inaccurate. A key stone to his abstract experimentations, Tisch was painted after an image of an Italian table from Domus magazine. Unhappy with his representation, the artist re-worked the canvas and dissolved the motif in an expressive swirl of colour, allowing the figurative ground and abstract gesture to collide. Demonstrating a shift in Richter’s abstract practice, the present work from 1985, allows the films of paint to become more visible. In the 1980s he began to build up rich layers of gestural and skilfully applied colour, obliterating the illusionistic underpainting evident in his earlier abstract work the artist allows the surface to come alive with artistic resonance. Identifying abstraction as his ultimate artistic goal, in his notes from 1964-65 Richter elucidates ‘all that interests me is the grey areas, the passages and tonal sequences, the pictorial spaces, overlaps and interlockings. If I had any way of abandoning the object as the bearer of this structure, I would immediately start painting abstracts’ (Gerhard Richter quoted in Gerhard Richter Text : Writings, Interviews and Letters, 1961-2007 , New York, 2009, p. 34). Regarding his earlier photo paintings as a temporary solution, in 1965 the artist began honing in on details, for example the curtains in the background of his painted photog