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Lot Essay
With its rich palimpsest of cascading colour and intense thickness of paint which adds an almost fossilised surface to the overall composition, Abstraktes Bild is an outstanding example of Gerhard Richter's art. Having adopted many different approaches to the canvas over a fifty year career as part of a broader strategy of painterly investigation, it is widely acknowledged that his best period of pure abstraction was around the time of this painting, 1990. For it is at this moment, after a twenty year examination, that he has truly come to grips with his own unique abstract language and in particular the use of the 'squeegee', a kind of draught excluder which substituted the paint brush as the tool of choice for the application of paint. Richter's own self-confessed enjoyment in painting these works is clear to see in Abstraktes Bild: as we cast our eyes across the intricately worked, kaleidoscopic surface of this painting, we become aware of myriad tiny details, electric flickers of colour that emerge from the dragged and mixed blue which dominates so much of it. Apertures within that blue allow us to see the various strata that comprise this painting, the almost photographic soft areas here, the jostling bursts of colour there, the paint dragged in a different direction in yet another spot. This creates an engaging totality, a picture that absorbs the viewer in its many details, not least because of the incredible temptation to decode and analyse the various movements and techniques on behalf of the artist that came to result in this tapestry-like wealth of colour.
Although he began to work with pure abstraction in the 1970s, it was only during the 1980s that he really focused and explored a myriad of techniques and ideas and towards the end of that decade that he truly began to use his legendary squeegees to such the dominant effect so remarkable in Abstraktes Bild. This tool would be as wide as the canvas and would be loaded with paint and systematically dragged across, or as in this case, down the painting. This sounds simple enough, but the skill and understanding of the medium of paint and the way that colours and layers interact requires complete mastery to know how, where and when to apply: how much time to allow each layer to dry to create the desired effect on the next, how to create the elusive transparency to create the pictorial effect. Here one can see this
gorgeous luminescence and gravity, as the paint is dragged down the surface in such a way that it fleetingly resembles either the horizontal rippling of a pond, as here, or the vertical torrent of some kind of cascade. The incandescent reds that articulate so much of the upper half and the intricate effects in the lower third, where gaps in the topmost surface allow the viewer to see another layer of paint dragged in a vertical direction, mean that the blue striations created by the squeegee heighten the firework-like effect of these dashes and glimpses of often intense colour.
'For Richter, the squeegee is the most important implement for integrating coincidence into his art. For years, he used it sparingly, but he came to appreciate how the structure of paint applied with a squeegee can never be completely controlled. It thus introduces a moment of surprise that often enables him to extricate himself from a creative dead-end, destroying a prior, unsatisfactory effort and opening the door to a fresh start. "It is a good technique for switching off thinking," Richter has said. "Consciously, I can't calculate. But subconsciously, I can sense it. This is a nice 'between' state".
(D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, trans. E.M. Solaro, Chicago & London 2009, p. 251).
Although he began to work with pure abstraction in the 1970s, it was only during the 1980s that he really focused and explored a myriad of techniques and ideas and towards the end of that decade that he truly began to use his legendary squeegees to such the dominant effect so remarkable in Abstraktes Bild. This tool would be as wide as the canvas and would be loaded with paint and systematically dragged across, or as in this case, down the painting. This sounds simple enough, but the skill and understanding of the medium of paint and the way that colours and layers interact requires complete mastery to know how, where and when to apply: how much time to allow each layer to dry to create the desired effect on the next, how to create the elusive transparency to create the pictorial effect. Here one can see this
gorgeous luminescence and gravity, as the paint is dragged down the surface in such a way that it fleetingly resembles either the horizontal rippling of a pond, as here, or the vertical torrent of some kind of cascade. The incandescent reds that articulate so much of the upper half and the intricate effects in the lower third, where gaps in the topmost surface allow the viewer to see another layer of paint dragged in a vertical direction, mean that the blue striations created by the squeegee heighten the firework-like effect of these dashes and glimpses of often intense colour.
'For Richter, the squeegee is the most important implement for integrating coincidence into his art. For years, he used it sparingly, but he came to appreciate how the structure of paint applied with a squeegee can never be completely controlled. It thus introduces a moment of surprise that often enables him to extricate himself from a creative dead-end, destroying a prior, unsatisfactory effort and opening the door to a fresh start. "It is a good technique for switching off thinking," Richter has said. "Consciously, I can't calculate. But subconsciously, I can sense it. This is a nice 'between' state".
(D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, trans. E.M. Solaro, Chicago & London 2009, p. 251).