Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist
Private Collection, Germany
Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Exhibited
Berlin, Haus am Waldsee, On the Trail: Stober Collection, 12 September – 1 November 1987
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Gerhard Richter: Abstract Paintings, 14 March – 22 April 1979
Eindhoven, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Gerhard Richter: Schilderijen / Paintings, 8 October – 05 November 1978
Düsseldorf, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Gerhard Richter, 22 October – 22 November 1977
Literature
J. Harten, K-H. Hering, et.al., Gerhard Richter. Bilder = Paintings 1962 – 1985, Cologne, 1986, p. 388 (mentioned), p. 209 (illustrated in colour)
A. Rorimer, D. Zacharopoulos, Gerhard Richter. Paintings, Marian Goodman Gallery/Sperone Westwater, New York, 1987, p. 6 (mentioned)
B. Buchloh, ed., Gerhard Richter Werkübersicht/Catalogue Raisonné 1962–1993, vol. III, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1993, no. 429 (illustrated in colour)
D. Elger, Gerhard Richter. Maler, Cologne, 2002, pp. 295, 296, 451 (mentioned)
E. Kiffl, R. Buschmann, et.al., Inside the Studio. Erika Kiffl fotografiert Gerhard Richter, Cologne, 2008, p. 9 (mentioned), pp. 64, 66 (illustrated)
H. Friedel, R. Storr, Gerhard Richter. Rot-Gelb-Blau. Die Gemälde für BMW, Munich, 2011, p. 102 (illustrated in colour)
Catalogue Essay
“It’s not that I’m always thinking about how to make something timeless, it’s more of a desire to maintain a certain artistic quality that moves us, that goes beyond what we are, and that is, in that sense, timeless.” GERHARD RICHTER

“Art is the highest form of hope.” GERHARD RICHTER

“A lot of people find other mediums more attractive – put a screen in a museum and nobody wants to look at paintings any more. But painting is
my profession, because it has always been the thing that interested me most. And now I’m of a certain age, I come from a different tradition and, in any case, I can’t do anything else. I’m still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that makes sense, that stays with us, as something human.” (Gerhard Richter in conversation with Nicolas Serota, Sprint 2011, quoted in M. Godfrey and N. Serota, eds., Gerhard Richter | Panorama, London, 2011, p. 15)

Abstraktes Bild, painted in 1977, belongs to a body of work by Gerhard Richter known as Soft Abstracts in which the artist explores the idea of a ‘blown-up’, the enlarged, zoomed-in image that is familiar from examining a painting up close or inspecting the surface through a magnifying glass. The artist projected enlarged photographs of variously coloured brushstrokes and copied the images onto the canvases creating abstract images as a result. The Soft Abstracts series was a continuation of Details, an earlier series of works made in 1970, in which Richter painted details of thick oil paint, extrapolating them in size to fill the large canvases.

The effect of the blown-up image in Abstraktes Bild is not simply the increase in size, but the transformation of the identity of the initial reference image and the subsequent impact on the viewer. Richter explains the objective of the enlargement in a letter to Benjamin Buchloh in the same year the present lot was created: “The outsize Blown-Up, which allows you to cheat, is for the time being the only form that can make real and comprehensible the ‘message’ that I want to present as fascinatingly as possible” (M. Godfrey, N. Serota, ed., Gerhard Richter | Panorama, p. 126). The Soft Abstracts were a bridge towards his later ‘free’ abstract paintings at which point the artist had ceased to use photographs as a starting point and began to employ a squeegee to drag the paint across the surface creating giant brushstrokes.

In Abstraktes Bild, Richter uses pastel blues and yellows to create soft geometrical shapes that flow in and out of each other resulting in a fluid composition of immense atmospheric quality, half way between a landscape painting and an abstraction. The present lot evokes Richter’s cloud and seascape paintings from the late 1960s and early 1970s (which predated the Detail paintings), yet it still remains highly abstract. There is an interesting ambiguity apparent here, too, between this abstraction and
the mechanical enlargement of the ‘figurative’ source image from which the final image is derived. In fact, the abstract and the figurative have lived alongside each other throughout Richter’s oeuvre, and have done so since his first photo-realist works of the early 1960s.

It is by processes such as this that Richter has consistently challenged traditional approaches to painting and that have made him one of the most important painters of the past 50 years. From his early series of photo-realist black-and-white paintings, where he uses just shades of grey, through his Colour Charts to his Abstract Paintings, of which the present lot is such a beautiful example, Richter has redefined painting for the present age.

“Abstract paintings are fictitious models because they visualize a reality, which we can neither see nor describe, but which we may nevertheless conclude exists. We attach negative names to this reality; the un-known, the un-graspable, the infinite, and for thousands of years we have depicted it in terms of substitute images live heaven and hell, gods and devils. With abstract painting we create a better means of approaching what can be neither seen nor understood.” (Gerhard Richter, in Gerhard Richter: Paintings, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1988, p. 107)
Artist Biography
Gerhard Richter
German • 1932
Powerhouse painter Gerhard Richter has been a key player in defining the formal and ideological agenda for painting in contemporary art. His instantaneously recognizable canvases literally and figuratively blur the lines of representation and abstraction. Uninterested in classification, Richter skates between unorthodoxy and realism, much to the delight of institutions and the market alike.
Richter's color palette of potent hues is all substance and "no style," in the artist's own words. From career start in 1962, Richter developed both his photorealist and abstracted languages side-by-side, producing voraciously and evolving his artistic style in short intervals. Richter's illusory paintings find themselves on the walls of the world's most revered museums—for instance, London’s Tate Modern displays the Cage (1) – (6), 2006 paintings that were named after experimental composer John Cage and that inspired the balletic 'Rambert Event' hosted by Phillips Berkeley Square in 2016.
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21

Gerhard Richter

Abstraktes Bild

1977
oil on canvas
200 x 300 cm (78 3/4 x 118 1/8 in)
Signed and dated ‘Richter 1977’ on the reverse.

Estimate
£2,500,000 - 3,500,000 ‡♠

Sold for £2,449,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

10 October 2012
London

1
Wolfgang Tillmans
Freischwimmer #84
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡♠
Sold for £39,650
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2
Dan Colen
Happy Accidents, Happy Endings
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
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3
Adam McEwen
Dessau
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡♠
Sold for £121,250
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4
Rob Pruitt
Baby
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ‡
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5
Jacob Kassay
Untitled
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £181,250
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6
Wade Guyton
Untitled
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 †
Sold for £169,250
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7
Christopher Wool
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £361,250
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8
John Baldessari
Strobe Series/Futurist: Dog on Leash (for Balla)
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
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9
Robert Longo
Untitled (Long Tou)
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡
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10
Sean Scully
Homo Duplex
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡♠
Sold for £601,250
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11
Louise Bourgeois
Nature Study
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000
Sold for £713,250
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12
Andy Warhol
Watches
Estimate £1,000,000 - 2,000,000 ‡
Sold for £1,004,450
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13
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
GE Short Line & Reading
Estimate £1,200,000 - 1,800,000 ‡
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14
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Big Joy
Estimate £2,500,000 - 3,500,000 ‡
Sold for £2,617,250
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15
This lot is no longer available.
16
Andy Warhol
Mao Portfolio (set of 10)
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡
Sold for £577,250
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17
Richard Prince
Untitled (Girlfriend)
Estimate £220,000 - 280,000 ‡
Sold for £223,250
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18
George Condo
Daphnée
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19
Damien Hirst
Sad Steps – Life Fulfilled
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡♠
Sold for £601,250
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20
Andreas Gursky
Rimini
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £421,250
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21
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild
Estimate £2,500,000 - 3,500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £2,449,250
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22
Anselm Kiefer
Dein Haus ritt die finstere Welle
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ♠
Sold for £577,250
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23
Miquel Barceló
Sinonimies
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ♠
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24
Richard Prince
Mumbai after Dark
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡
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25
Enoc Pérez
Darlington Hotel, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico,
Estimate £140,000 - 180,000 ‡
Sold for £145,250
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26
Andreas Gursky
Hong Kong Stock Exchange (diptych)
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
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27
Robert Indiana
LOVE (Red faces Blue sides),
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡
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28
Ugo Rondinone
DRITTERAPRILZWEITAUSENDUNDSIEBEN
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
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29
Raqib Shaw
Death, Beauty & Justice
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡
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30
Yayoi Kusama
Galaxy Red A,B,C
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000
Sold for £313,250
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31
This lot is no longer available.
32
Martin Kippenberger
S.Q.36/I.B.B.D. (Ich bin Besonders Doof)
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ♠
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33
Bill Viola
Ablutions
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Sold for £181,250
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34
Margherita Manzelli
Mr. Grigio
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
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35
Nigel Cooke
Drift
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡♠
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36
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
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37
Ged Quinn
Things are Exactly as they Seem
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡♠
Sold for £91,250
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

10 October 2012 London

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Gerhard Richter

21

Gerhard Richter

Abstraktes Bild

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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10 October 2012
London