Gerhard Richter - Evening & Day Editions London Thursday, September 10, 2020 | Phillips

Evening & Day Editions

London Auction 10 September 2020

  • Provenance

    Tate Modern, London
    Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011

  • Literature

    Gerhard Richter – Beirut, exh. cat., Beirut Art Center, 2012, p. 35

  • Catalogue Essay

    In the mid-1980’s, at a time when New York Neo-Conceptual artists were engaging with questions of image appropriation and reproduction, the German Neo-Expressionists were focused on the emotionality of paint. Gerhard Richter, uniquely explored both lines of inquiry, and began painting over photographs, starting a lifelong investigation into the dialogue between old and new media.

    In his Museum Visit series, Richter merges photographic reproduction with abstract materiality, retaining the construct of the printed photograph while heavily applying lacquer to the surface. Museum Visit is Richter’s largest series of over-painted photographs, including over two hundred individual images. In the run-up to the Tate Modern’s retrospective Panorama (2011-12), Richter captured the flux of individuals attending the museum in a single day from a number of different view points. The waxing and waning flow of visitors is narrated through the artist’s colour choice of lacquer – bright and bold colours indicate large or active crowds passing through whereas white was used over scenes of fewer people.

  • 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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Property from a Private UK Collection

35

Gerhard Richter

MV. 65

2011
Lacquer on colour photograph.
10.1 x 15.1 cm (3 7/8 x 5 7/8 in.)
Signed, dated and titled in pencil, from the series of unique works created in the run-up to Richter's 2011 retrospective Panorama at the Tate Modern, London, framed.

Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 ♠

Sold for £32,500

Contact Specialist
Rebecca Tooby-Desmond
Specialist, Head of Sale, Editions, Associate Director
London
+44 207 318 4079

Evening & Day Editions

London Auction 10 September 2020