Beschreibung:

20 Property of an Important European Collector Gerhard Richter Abstraktes Bild 776-1 《抽象畫 776-1號》 1992 signed, numbered and dated 'Richter 1992 776-1' on the reverse oil on canvas 92 x 82.1 cm. (36 1/4 x 32 3/8 in.) Painted in 1992.
Provenance Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London Private Collection Phillips, London, 10 February 2014, lot 15 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Tokyo, Fuji Television Gallery, 5 European Artists (Baselitz, Clemente, Kiefer, Kounellis, Richter), September – October, 1994 Literature B. Buchloh, Gerhard Richter Werkubersicht/Catalogue Raissone, vol. 3: 1962-1993, Ostfildern-Ruit 1993, no. 776-1, n.p. (illustrated) Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonne. Volume 4. Nos. 652-1-805-6. 1988-1994, Ostfildern 2015, no. 776-1, p. 490 (illustrated) Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ed., Gerhard Richter Werkübersicht/ Catalogue Raisonné 1962 - 1993 vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1993, no. 776-1, n.p. (illustrated) Catalogue Essay Executed in 1992, Abstraktes Bild 776-1 exemplifies the purest articulation of Richter’s finest period of abstraction “the culmination of a rigorous life-long investigation into the possibilities and limitations of painting” (Ulrich Wilmes quoted in Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonne, vol. 4 1988-1994, Ostfildern, 2015, p. 22). Richter utilises a squeegee, his trademark method, to create sinuous columns of radiant Prussian blue fused with vivid chartreuse rippling down the canvas. The glistening ribbons of brilliant colour contrast with the more subdued violet background to form an eye-catching interplay of light and texture, tempting the viewer with some impenetrable reality hidden just beyond the painting’s surface. In addition to the superimposed layers of rich bejewelled tones, Richter’s left-to-right, stop-and-go motions of the squeegee stimulate the viewer’s tactile senses by producing build-ups of paint, lining and rising above the hypnotic and aqueous columns like tides, giving form to yet another dimension of the work. Abstraktes Bild is a key work realised during a climactic moment in Richter’s career when the artist achieved unprecedented global triumph, culminating in critical acclaim. Created the same year as his renowned four-part Bach suite (Moderna Museet, Stockholm), the monumental Abstraktes Bild belongs to one of Richter’s most highly celebrated abstract cycles. Abstraktes Bild 809-3, for instance, prestigiously resides in the joint collection of the Tate Modern and the National Galleries of Scotland. Other companion works, Abstraktes Bild 768-1, 771 and 780-1 are now housed as collection highlights in the Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., respectively. Following a breakthrough retrospective at the Tate Modern, London, in 1991 and a prodigious presentation of his work in Germany at Documenta IX the subsequent year, Richter received a major touring retrospective Gerhard Richter Malerei 1962-1993. The magnificent striations of Abstraktes Bild represent an innovative development in Richter’s technique in the 1990s. Robert Storr notes the artist “has taken to flaying the painted skin of his canvases with a spatula in broad strokes or long, wavering stripes leaving behind abraded, shimmering surfaces that at their sheerest most luminous look like the Aurora Borealis suspended above various red, orange, yellow, green blue or violet planets (Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter Forty Years of Painting, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002, p. 81). Offsetting the blended softness of the pigments, the sudden horizontal strips created by the hard edge of a palette knife cut across the canvas, imbuing the composition with a sense of unification and architectural structure. This process is not one of addition, but rather of subtraction. Richter explains in a statement from 1992, 'For about a year now, I have been unable to do anything in my painting but scrape off, pile on and then remove again. In this process, I don’t actually reveal what was beneath. If I wanted to do that, I would have to think what to reveal (figurative pictures or signs or patterns