“Abstraction sounds very scientific,
I don’t agree or see it that way.”
—Gerhard RichterGerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild, 1984, belongs to a series of domestically scaled abstract works, all featuring gestural, impastoed brushstrokes that uniquely straddle abstraction and representation. Viewing this work from a distance unmistakably recalls a verdant natural scene, with a smooth gradient along the upper half resembling an early morning sky, beneath which lies a horizon of rich greenery. Closer inspection of this work, however, reveals a collection of various brushstrokes and textures – a meandering zig-zag, gentle upward strokes, and small punctuated dabs. What Richter has achieved in the present work is a reconciliation of the disparity between illusionistic space and material presence, “giving rise to a new and surprising image of reality.”iPerhaps signifying the admiration with which he viewed the present work, Richter gifted this painting to his friend and fellow artist Jörg Immendorf for the decoration of his legendary bar, La Paloma in Hamburg. La Paloma opened the same year that Richter painted and gifted this work, 1984, and on its walls, Immendorf adorned the space with works by the most avant garde German painters of the time, including Joseph Beuys, A.R. Penck, Markus Lüpertz, Georg Baselitz and Julian Schnabel.
Richter began painting landscapes in earnest around 1970 and has retained a particular interest in the motif throughout his practice, although his engagement with the genre has varied over time. His softly overpainted Views of Corsica from 1968–1969, inspired by photographs taken by the artist on a family holiday, exemplify his earlier photo-realistic painting method. He then used the same style for his paintings of the German countryside – photographing different locations and creating paintings from these photographs. In contrast with German Romantic artists from centuries prior, such as Caspar David Friedrich who often depicted solitary figures within the landscape as an embodiment of the human desire to understand the spiritual significance of nature, Richter’s landscapes explored what it meant to paint a German landscape as an independent subject, one that did not reference any sort of religious or spiritual understanding of nature.
“I see countless landscapes, photograph barely 1 in a 100,000, and paint barely 1 in 100 of those that I photograph. I am seeking something quite specific.”
—Gerhard RichterEach of the abstract landscapes painted in this scale from 1984 features active brushstrokes set against a tranquil blue background. In these works, as described by Dietmar Elger, Richter “imitated the scheme of a photographed landscape, land below and sky above, even picking up the horizontal partitioning of his early landscapes.”ii Abstraktes Bild, while bearing a similar composition, is distinct from his earlier landscapes from the late 1960s and 1970, such as Landschaft mit Baumgruppe (“Landscape with Clump of Trees”), 1970, Private Collection, Hong Kong, which depicts a moody, hazy landscape in earth tones. Works like this one were painted because, in his words, “I felt like painting something beautiful.”iii Richter’s later landscapes from 1983 onwards, on the contrary, did not exist just to be beautiful paintings for aesthetic contemplation, but as formal, structural models for his abstract compositions—and in turn, a new way of describing the reality around us.
[Left] Gerhard Richter, Corsica (House), 1969. Seattle Art Museum. Image/Artwork:
© Gerhard Richter 2023 (0234)
[Right] Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog, circa 1817, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Image: bpk Bildagentur / Hamburger Kunsthalle /Elke Walford / Art Resource, NYBy the point that Abstraktes Bild was painted in the mid 1980s, Richter’s landscape practice had become entrenched in the abstract style he came to adopt and for which he had become so well-known. In this work, the two traditions—abstraction and landscape—exist in an illuminating dialogue in which these two styles are not diametrically opposed, but rather, closely related as Richter’s interpretation and appropriation of his own reality. In this manner, Abstraktes Bild represents the artist’s investigation of the ways in which we perceive reality and, subsequently, the way that viewers interact with different forms of representation. “For me,” Richter has said, “there is no difference between a landscape and an abstract painting. In my opinion the term ‘realism’ makes no sense.”iv
i Dietmar Elger and Elizabeth M. Solaro, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago, 2009, p. 277.
ii Ibid.
iii Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: Landscapes, Ostfildern, 2011, p. 28.
iv Dietmar Elger and Elizabeth M. Solaro, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago, 2009, p. 273.
Provenance
The Artist
Collection "La Paloma," Jörg Immendorff, Hamburg
Galerie-St. Gilles S.A., Zurich
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1988Exhibited
Potsdam, Museum Barberini, Gerhard Richter. Abstraktion, June 30–October 21, 2018, no. 44, pp. 154, 235 (illustrated, p. 154)
Literature
Jörg Immendorff and Hans Peter Riegel, eds., FF bringts, Dusseldorf, 1984, n.p. (illustrated)
Jürgen Harten, ed., Gerhard Richter Bilder / Paintings 1962–1985, Cologne, 1986, no. 551/3, p. 398
Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter, Maler, 2008
Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter. A Life in Painting, 2009
Monika Jenni-Preihs, Gerhard Richter und die Geschichte Deutschlands, Vienna/Berlin, 2013, p. 168
Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 3: Nos. 389-651-2 (1976-1987), Berlin, 2013, no. 551-3, p. 391 (illustrated)
Dietmar Elger, "Painting like Nature: Chance and the Landscape in Gerhard Richter's Overpainted Photographs," Art History, February 2017, pp. 187–188Artist 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.
116
Abstraktes Bild
signed, inscribed and dated "551-3 Ohne Titel Richter 1984" on the reverse
oil on canvas
16 3/4 x 23 3/4 in. (42.5 x 60.3 cm)
Painted in 1984.
Estimate
$350,000 - 550,000
Annie Dolan
Specialist, Head of Sale, Morning Session
+1 212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session
New York Auction 15 November 2023
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