'It's never blind chance: it's a chance that is always planned, but also always surprising' – Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild, 1981, is a visually striking and exceptional example of Richter’s innovative, experimental and masterful painterly process in its infancy. Created in 1981, Abstraktes Bild marks an important evolution in Gerhard Richter’s celebrated career, produced at the moment the artist shifted his attention from figurative Photo Paintings to the infinite possibilities of abstraction. In the same year that the present work was created, Richter’s Photo Paintings from the previous decade were shown in the group exhibition A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy in London. From Pablo Picasso to Andy Warhol, the show brought together the most important painters of the time including works by the Neo-Expressionists, Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer. For Richter, the exhibition pushed him to depart from figurative painting entirely and dive into the aesthetic potential of abstraction – a desire that led him to break the boundaries of art history’s abstract canon. Richter has explained that his early abstract paintings ‘allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realised that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming – that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original – then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part’ (Gerhard Richter, quoted in Gerhard Richter: Text, London, 2009, p. 256).
Typical of Richter’s spectacular early series of Abstrakte Bilder, the present work is more intimate in scale than his later monumental canvases, allowing its viewer to closely examine its extraordinary surface whilst simultaneously absorbing the whole composition. Encapsulating Richter’s early investigations into order and chaos, Abstraktes Bild masterfully balances smooth planes of colour with sumptuously layered areas of impasto. Rich, vibrant colours and seductive textures in the present work stimulate our senses, conjuring our desires through Richter’s forceful yet harmonious strokes of paint. Bright yellow and electric green fields are contrasted with areas of dark grey, appearing as organic outcrops of land meeting the sea, evoking a landscape seen from above. In Richter’s own words, ‘Almost all the abstract paintings show scenarios, surroundings or landscapes that don’t exist, but they create the impression that they could exist. As though they were photographs of scenarios and regions that had never yet been seen, that could never exist’ (Gerhard Richter, quoted in ‘I Have Nothing to Say and I’m Saying It: Conversation Between Gerhard Richter and Nicholas Serota, Spring 2011’ in Mark Godfrey and Nicholas Serota, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2011, p. 19).
Two horizontal green and blue lines slice across the canvas, recalling the gestural strokes of Abstract Expressionist painting. While visually reminiscent of these works, Richter refuses to conform to the sentimental movement that defined Abstract Expressionism. Rather, Richter was able to sculpt a unique aesthetic identity for himself, determined by his trademark tool, the squeegee. A rectangular sheet of Perspex attached to a wooden handle, Richter applies and re-applies layers of paint to the canvas, dragging them across the surface to produce glistening traces of colour. An important innovation for Richter, this technique enabled him to enhance the physical quality of paint whilst renouncing a certain element of artistic control. Asked how chance in his paintings related to the automatism of Jackson Pollock or Surrealism, Richter stated: ‘It certainly is different. Above all, it’s never blind chance: it’s a chance that is always planned, but also always surprising. And I need it in order to carry on, in order to eradicate my mistakes, to destroy what I’ve worked out wrong, to introduce something different and disruptive. I’m often astonished to find how much better chance is than I am' (Gerhard Richter, quoted in Benjamin Buchloch and Hans Ulrich Obrist, eds., Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews 1962-1993, London, 1995, p. 159).
Spontaneous yet confident, instinctive yet deliberate, this intimate work is a sublime example of the miraculous nature of Richter’s early abstractions, dismantling figuration, expression and the authorial voice even as it declares a bold intentionality which would define the rest of his highly celebrated career. Abstraktes Bild showcases Richter’s exceptional skills in technique and abstract composition, confirming Richter’s status as a revered pioneer in the history of Western painting.