Gerhard Richter’s enigmatic career has been characterized by his constant reinvention and reinvigoration of his practice. Undoubtedly, he is most widely recognized for his technical prowess wielding only a brush, paint and canvas. Richter’s incredible paint handling, gestural brushwork, and overall abstract compositional structure are manifest in this arresting small work from 1972, Vermalung (braun). Part of a series of 120 Vermalung, or Inpainting, works, this series was the most complete realization to date of his painterly abstract style. Having progressed from the loosely abstracted Townscapes of 1968-69 and specific works such as Park Piece from 1971, Richter was prepared for fully abandoning any figurative reference by the time he set out to paint the current work.

The “inpainting” of these works could refer to the manner in which Richter first may have painted a figurative work, but instead of the soft blurring abstraction of his earlier works, here he has literally “painted into” the figuration as to completely obstruct any recognition therein. Informed by his interest in Art Informel, a European abstract movement which abandoned and refuted the harder-edged geometric abstraction of Cubism in favor of a much freer, more intuitive style of painting, Richter has applied his paint in thick bands of impasto, sweeping and whirling across the canvas; however, and in opposition to many of his contemporaries, the works were not meant to be read as expressive. Similarly to other monochromatic abstractionists, such as Robert Ryman, these works were a way for Richter to investigate the nature of the paint and his gesture without a personal or expressive component. These Inpaintings solidified Richter’s belief in the power of abstraction and its ability to reflect an objectivity and immediacy through its textures, patterns, surfaces, colors, and application – qualities which he would most fully investigate in the celebrated Abstraktes Bilds.