Beschreibung:

8 Gerhard Richter Follow Abstraktes Bild (682-4) signed, numbered and dated 'Richter 682-4 1988' on the reverse oil on canvas 72.5 x 62.2 cm (28 1/2 x 24 1/2 in.) Executed in 1988.
Provenance Galerie Jean Bernier, Athens Farideh Cadot Gallery, New York Private Collection Sotheby's, London, 7 February 2003, lot 182 Private Collection (acquired at the above sale) Private Collection Literature Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 4: 1988-1994 , Ostfildern, 2015, no. 682-4, p. 192 (illustrated) Video Gerhard Richter ‘Abstraktes Bild (682-4)’, 1988 Originating from the heart of Richter’s inquiry into the transcendence of painterly abstraction, which began in 1976, Abstraktes Bild (682-4), 1988, displays a supreme chromatic complexity, offering an illustriously hypnotic field of luminous painterly pigment. Catalogue Essay The present work perfectly reflects Gerhard Richter’s lifelong scrutiny of painting. Sublime accents of erupting red flood Abstraktes Bild (682-4) , as rivers of molten paint cascade across the canvas, veiling the milky indiscernible figurative stratum. Electric sheens of dragged colours convalesce in a symphony of exquisite tonality. Hints of vermilion and enunciations of acidic yellow culminate as brilliant bright white punctuations create a profound sense of depth and pictorial intensity. A painting that is equally harmonious and in disarray, the kaleidoscopic incandescence of the palette results in a visually arresting canvas that is utterly mesmerising. Questioning the nature of vision, Richter’s textural topography chaotically shifts our perspective, resulting in pure stimulation of the senses. His opus, retroactively analogous with Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting, prompts Richter to fall alongside the gestural titans of the twentieth century. However, Richter’s post-conceptual paintings encapsulate a critical and reflective relationship to the historical transformation of the very concept of painting itself. Possessing an aesthetic authority of the very highest calibre, Abstraktes Bild (682-4) is a magisterial manifestation of Richter’s celebrated oeuvre. Originating from the heart of Richter’s inquiry into the transcendence of painterly abstraction, which began in 1976, Abstraktes Bild (682-4) , 1988, displays a supreme chromatic complexity, offering an illustriously hypnotic field of luminous painterly pigment. Richter painted a series of three canvases in succession, each executed in 1988 and measuring 72 x 62 cm. Like the present work, Abstraktes Bild (682-2) and Abstraktes Bild (682-3) favour a saturated coating of scarlet over a blurred, possibly figurative backdrop. The same year that the trio was conceived, Richter held seminal shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Contemporary Art Gallery in Tokyo. Following this, Richter embarked on major solo exhibitions in 1989 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, soon receiving the Wolf Prize in Arts in 1994. Richter’s prolifically sustained philosophical enquiry into the medium of painting sought to redefine the foundations of our contemporary visual language. Copying large-scale photographic projections of smaller abstract works, Richter’s early abstracts emerged in the wake of his brief return to expressionist forms of painterly practice. By the late 1980s Richter had begun to produce his gestural yet controlled aesthetic of abstract painting. Obliterating his relationship to the process of photographic modelling, Richter fashioned a long wooden ruler, utilised to scrape thick masses of paint across the surface of the canvas in a series of geological layers. Through the thick and vivid application of paint Richter moved on from his photo realist experimentations and released his grasp on the controlled nature of his painting. ‘With a brush you have control. The paint goes on the brush and you make the mark. From experience you know exactly what will happen. With the squeegee you lose control. Not all control, but some control. It depends on the angle, the pressure and the particular paint I am using’ (Conversation between Gerhard