Beschreibung:

Gerhard Richter Abstraktes Bild 1988 Oil on canvas. 78 3/4 x 63 in. (199.9 x 160 cm). Signed, dated and numbered “Richter 1988 666-5” on the reverse.
Provenance Collection of the artist; Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London; Private collection, London; Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach; Collection Plum, Aachen; Private collection, New York Exhibited Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Gerhard Richter 1988/89, October 15 - December 3, 1989, p. 69 (illustrated in color); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Bonn, Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der BRD; Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Madrid, Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía, Gerhard Richter Retrospective, September 23, 1993 - August 22, 1994, p. 119 (illustrated in color); Aachen-Kornelimünster, Ehemalige Reichsabtei, Gerhard Richter Werke aus Aachener Sammlungen, November 14, 1999 - January 9, 2000, p. 51 (illustrated in color); Friedrichshafen, Kunstverein Friedrichshafen in the Zeppelin Museum, Gerhard Richter Malerei 1966-1997, 2001, p. 55 (illustrated in color); Kleve, Museum Kurhaus, Sammlung Plum, May 5 - September 5, 2004, p. 17 (illustrated in color); Dusseldorf, K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Gerhard Richter February 12 - August 24, 2005, p. 198 (illustrated in color) Literature K. Schampers, Gerhard Richter 1988/89, Rotterdam, 1989, p. 69 (illustrated in color); A. Thill, et al., Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, Volume III, Ostfildern, 1993, no. 666-5 (illustrated in color); R. Mönig, ed., Sammlung Plum, Kleve, 2004, p. 17 (illustrated in color) Catalogue Essay If I paint an abstract picture I neither know in advance what it is supposed to look like, nor where I intend to go when I am painting, what could be done, to what end. For this reason the painting is a quasi blind, desperate effort, like that made by someone who has been cast out into a completely incomprehensible environment with no means of support — by someone who has a reasonable range of tools, materials and abilities and the urgent desire to build something meaningful and useful, but it cannot be a house or a chair or anything else that can be named, and therefore just starts building in the vague hope that his correct, expert activity will finally produce something correct and meaningful. GERHARD RICHTER (Gerhard Richter quoted in Gerhard Richter Tate Gallery, London 1991, p. 116) Gerhard Richter has firmly held a position as one of the most influential artists of the last 50 years. His career has been devoted to exploring and mastering oil paint, his chosen medium, the impact of which has been extraordinary and immensely far-reaching. By 1976 when he first conceived of the title Abstraktes Bild he was already an accomplished painter of subjects derived from real life. This title accompanies his subsequent paintings to the present day. Foregoing a belief in the utility of figurative painting, Richter’s artistic process is one of searching rather than finding. Since the inception of this body of work, his resignation to seeking has continued to yield limitless discovery with his visually rich Abstraktes Bild. The present lot is exemplary of his abstract series as a whole, in which each painting, is “a model or metaphor about a possibility of social coexistence. Looked at in this way, all that I am trying to do in each picture is to bring together the most disparate and mutually contradictory elements, alive and viable, in the greatest possible freedom,” (M. Hetschel and H. Friedel, eds., Gerhard Richter 1998, London, 1998, p. 11). Ironically, he achieves this freedom through a rigorous and meticulous technique involving the removal and reapplication of separate layers of paint. With the variance of each layer, chance delivers an unpredictable configuration of colors. The final result is masterful; the colors, though static as the canvas ultimately coalesces, achieve a seeming iridescence; they radiate against both the darker and lighter tones that surround them. The relationship between the colors becomes symbiotic. Richter’s other work, which includes his early color ch