Gerhard Richter

signed, dated 1990 and numbered 712 (on the reverse)

260 by 200 cm. 102¼ by 78½ in.

Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London

Private Collection, Fort Washington (acquired from the above in 1991)

Sotheby's, New York, 13 November 2012, Lot 4

Private Collection, Europe

Christie's, New York, 13 May 2014, Lot 15

Acquired directly from the above sale by the present owner

London, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, Gerhard Richter Mirrors, April-June 1991, p. 23, no. 2, illustrated in colour

Hong Kong, Art Intelligence Global, Gerhard Richter: Abstrakte Bilder, 27 March 2023 - 28 April 2023

B. Buchloh, ed., Gerhard Richter: Wekübersicht/Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1993, p. 123, no. 712 illustrated in colour

A. Thill, et al., Gerhard Richter: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1993, vol. III , Ostfildern-Ruit, 1993, no. 712, illustrated in colour

Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter. Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 4, 1988-1994, Ostfildern 2015, no. 712, pp. 280-281, illustrated in colour

A sweeping vista of densely layered pigment unfurls across Abstraktes Bild, a masterwork that stands as the quintessence of Gerhard Richter's formidable language of abstraction. Beneath a silvery-grey veil of thick, flowing oil paint - reminiscent of tides washing over the weathered strata of an ancient cliff - bursts of red, yellow, and blue peek through, both hidden and revealed in a subtle dance of colour and texture. According to Richter's own catalogue raisonné, this painting marks the dawn of 1990, a pivotal year in a creative period spanning 1988 to 1992, when his monumental abstractions reached a new zenith. This moment heralded his consummate command of the squeegee, the elongated spatula that became his signature tool, dragging paint across canvas with deliberate force and delicate nuance.

The Abstraktes Bild follows naturally from his 1989 Eis series, a quartet of intense abstractions now treasured at The Art Institute of Chicago. While smaller in scale, those works laid the foundation for the present painting's monumental presence. Towering over two and a half meters high, Abstraktes Bild is one of only eight such oversized works created by Richter that year, siblings housed in eminent institutions including the Tate Collection in London and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Paintings of this magnitude and mastery are extraordinarily rare - only three from this epoch have ever come to public auction - making the re-emergence of Abstraktes Bild from a private collection an exciting opportunity.

What emerges from the canvas is a vast, chromatic symphony - layers of seeping, radiant colour coalesce and fragment in rhythms of light and shadow. Streaks of deep blues and grays flow and collide with flashes of red, yellow, and green, each pigment strata oscillating between harmony and discord. The surface pulses with a sensuous density, inviting the eye to journey both across and beneath it's textured planes, like witnessing a living natural phenomenon: the restless sea or the ever-shifting sky. Immersed in this immense visual field, one senses the grand lineage of Abstract Expressionism, recalling the sublime works of Rothko and Pollock. Yet Richter's hand is distinctly his own - a testament to relentless technical innovation and an intellectual probe into how images shape perception.

Though conventionally translated as 'Abstract Painting', the German title Abstraktes Bild carries a richer meaning - as curator Robert Storr suggests, Bild means 'picture,' hinting at something beyond mere paint on canvas. This distinction mirrors the work's visceral energy, where thick, semi-liquid pigments are dragged and layered with the squeegee, merging and smudging to create complex juxtapositions. Each pass adds new strata, pushing the painting into unexpected variations until Richter senses its final form: "there is no more that I can do to them, when they exceed me, or they have something that I can no longer keep up with" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Gerhard Richter: Paintings, 1988, p. 108). Chance plays an essential role in this process. Richter embraces unpredictability, describing his method as a quest to "end up with a picture that I haven't planned," seeking a creative surprise beyond premeditation. The painting, then, evolves beyond artist and intention, acquiring a life of its own - unique, autonomous, and irreproducible.

Gerhard Richter occupies a position of unmatched stature in contemporary art, his prodigious career a five-decade-long meditation on vision, reality, and the limits of representation. His restless inquiry has spanned genres, media, and ideas - from photography to film, figurative to abstract - with abstraction emerging as the summit of his philosophical and artistic explorations. As Benjamin H. D. Buchloh notes, Richter's role in the canon of abstraction is nothing short of "incontrovertible centrality" (Benjamin H. D. Buchloh in Gerhard Richter: Large Abstracts, exh. cat., Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2009, p. 9).

Abstraktes Bild crystallizes Richter's belief that abstraction dissolves order into an anarchic, revolutionary flux: "there is no order, everything is dissolved". Across the sweeping corpus of his Abstrakte Bilder, this dissolution becomes a deliberate, sublime chaos - a dismantling of representation, illusion, and narrative. The work transcends objecthood to become an experience - a subjective encounter where colour, texture, and movement interrogate perception itself. In so doing, Richter extends the visionary legacies of Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and the Abstract Expressionists, crafting a psychological resonance both profound and elusive. Abstraktes Bild is not merely a painting, but a monumental act of seeing - a living, breathing testament to the ever-shifting, enigmatic nature of perception itself.