Richter before 1983
1963 Flight for a New Art
2016 SOLD for $ 25.6M including premium, UNPAID
2019 SOLD for £ 15.5M including premium
PRE 2019 SALE DISCUSSION
Painted in 1963, Düsenjäger is a masterpiece from the earliest phase of the career of Gerhard Richter. Similar themes were dared at the same time in another style by Roy Lichtenstein in his revolutionary conception of the Pop Art.
Düsenjäger, oil on canvas 130 x 200 cm, was sold for $ 11.2M including premium by Christie's on 13 November 2007.
It reached $ 25.6M including premium at Phillips on November 16, 2016, lot 7. The buyer defaulted but the consignor had been paid before the litigation. The artwork remained in the custody and ownership of the auction house. The story is told by Georgina Adam in The Art Newspaper.
Düsenjäger is now estimated £ 10M to £ 15M for sale by Phillips in London on March 7, lot 13.
I narrated this lot as follows before the 2016 sale. The video had been prepared by Phillips before that auction.
During the war Gerhard Richter is a Dresden boy. He admires the feats of the soldiers. One of them brings him back to reason : he just deserves a spanking.
Years pass. Germany is a major challenge of the Cold War. Richter leaves to the west in 1961, two months before the build of the Berlin Wall. With his friends in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf he wants a new art that expresses their time with no legacy from the pictorial styles of the past. These students conceive the Capitalist Realism. What a program !
Richter believes that truth lays in photography because a photo catches a moment. The message is stronger if the image is poor. When copying these banalities in oil on large canvases, he maintains the grisaille or the poor color of the original view. He blurs the lines during the completion phase of his artwork in order that no detail shall disturb the overall effect.
He executes two paintings on the theme of military aviation in 1963. Bomber shows a US squadron dropping bombs during the Second World War. Düsenjäger, meaning jet fighter, displays the first military aircraft authorized in the Federal Republic with NATO support.
Düsenjäger is huge. The jet is in flight over any horizon. The blur gives an illusion of speed and the colors are ugly. The original photo was poor. The front of the aircraft is already out of the frame : it was going too fast.
The artist has often commented about his art. He does not want to be a politician or an anti-militarist. The juxtaposition of Bomber and Düsenjäger provides nevertheless a strong message.
The jet fighter is certainly necessary for the military balance. This terrifying machine demonstrates however that no political progress was made after the Second World War : in 1963 everybody waits for the international conflict that will follow the Cold War. Bomber and Düsenjäger are indeed the Guernica of Gerhard Richter.
Painted in 1963, Düsenjäger is a masterpiece from the earliest phase of the career of Gerhard Richter. Similar themes were dared at the same time in another style by Roy Lichtenstein in his revolutionary conception of the Pop Art.
Düsenjäger, oil on canvas 130 x 200 cm, was sold for $ 11.2M including premium by Christie's on 13 November 2007.
It reached $ 25.6M including premium at Phillips on November 16, 2016, lot 7. The buyer defaulted but the consignor had been paid before the litigation. The artwork remained in the custody and ownership of the auction house. The story is told by Georgina Adam in The Art Newspaper.
Düsenjäger is now estimated £ 10M to £ 15M for sale by Phillips in London on March 7, lot 13.
I narrated this lot as follows before the 2016 sale. The video had been prepared by Phillips before that auction.
During the war Gerhard Richter is a Dresden boy. He admires the feats of the soldiers. One of them brings him back to reason : he just deserves a spanking.
Years pass. Germany is a major challenge of the Cold War. Richter leaves to the west in 1961, two months before the build of the Berlin Wall. With his friends in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf he wants a new art that expresses their time with no legacy from the pictorial styles of the past. These students conceive the Capitalist Realism. What a program !
Richter believes that truth lays in photography because a photo catches a moment. The message is stronger if the image is poor. When copying these banalities in oil on large canvases, he maintains the grisaille or the poor color of the original view. He blurs the lines during the completion phase of his artwork in order that no detail shall disturb the overall effect.
He executes two paintings on the theme of military aviation in 1963. Bomber shows a US squadron dropping bombs during the Second World War. Düsenjäger, meaning jet fighter, displays the first military aircraft authorized in the Federal Republic with NATO support.
Düsenjäger is huge. The jet is in flight over any horizon. The blur gives an illusion of speed and the colors are ugly. The original photo was poor. The front of the aircraft is already out of the frame : it was going too fast.
The artist has often commented about his art. He does not want to be a politician or an anti-militarist. The juxtaposition of Bomber and Düsenjäger provides nevertheless a strong message.
The jet fighter is certainly necessary for the military balance. This terrifying machine demonstrates however that no political progress was made after the Second World War : in 1963 everybody waits for the international conflict that will follow the Cold War. Bomber and Düsenjäger are indeed the Guernica of Gerhard Richter.
1966 Gerhard Richter explores the Anti-Art
2010 SOLD 13.2 M$ including premium
PRE SALE DISCUSSION
In 1966, the art market did not know that Gerhard Richter will be one of the most important painters and theorists of the end of the century. His work will be complete, from figurative to abstract and from monochromatic to bright colors.
He was 34 years old. One hundred years before him, the traditionalists reviled the painters who were preparing their works by the photography in a quest for realism. Richter did the opposite. He choses a banal photo, black and white, in a first step which excludes the artistic creation. It projects the image onto the canvas which he paints, then he scrambles it by energetic brush strokes.
A painting by Richter resembles a bad image from a newspaper or from broadcast blurred up to the limit of readability. It is an artistic feat, first because the vagueness encourages the audience to imagine the real, second because at that time the bad images had already invaded our daily lives.
The Weserburg Museum of Bremen, founded in 1991, aims to support contemporary artistic creation. It could be proud to own an outstanding work of Richter. In a bold cultural gesture, it is commissioning Sotheby's to sell it.Richter was the rising star of 1966, and the museum prefers to discover and encourage the artists of today.
In more than 2 meters wide, Matrosen shows a group of sailors, in two rows like the photo of a sports team or a college class. This painting is estimated $ 6M, and the illustration is shared by Artdaily in an article prepared after a press conference organized by the museum. This will be one of the highlights of the evening sale in New York on November 9.
POST SALE COMMENT
The price, $ 13.2 million including premium, is an acknowledgement of the originality and depth of the artistic ideas of Richter at the outset of his career.
In 1966, the art market did not know that Gerhard Richter will be one of the most important painters and theorists of the end of the century. His work will be complete, from figurative to abstract and from monochromatic to bright colors.
He was 34 years old. One hundred years before him, the traditionalists reviled the painters who were preparing their works by the photography in a quest for realism. Richter did the opposite. He choses a banal photo, black and white, in a first step which excludes the artistic creation. It projects the image onto the canvas which he paints, then he scrambles it by energetic brush strokes.
A painting by Richter resembles a bad image from a newspaper or from broadcast blurred up to the limit of readability. It is an artistic feat, first because the vagueness encourages the audience to imagine the real, second because at that time the bad images had already invaded our daily lives.
The Weserburg Museum of Bremen, founded in 1991, aims to support contemporary artistic creation. It could be proud to own an outstanding work of Richter. In a bold cultural gesture, it is commissioning Sotheby's to sell it.Richter was the rising star of 1966, and the museum prefers to discover and encourage the artists of today.
In more than 2 meters wide, Matrosen shows a group of sailors, in two rows like the photo of a sports team or a college class. This painting is estimated $ 6M, and the illustration is shared by Artdaily in an article prepared after a press conference organized by the museum. This will be one of the highlights of the evening sale in New York on November 9.
POST SALE COMMENT
The price, $ 13.2 million including premium, is an acknowledgement of the originality and depth of the artistic ideas of Richter at the outset of his career.
1967 Beyond Germany
2019 SOLD for $ 20.5M including premium
From 1963 to 1967 Gerhard Richter realizes his series of photo-paintings, appropriations in oil on canvas in giant format of bad black and white photos. For some images like Düsenjäger painted in 1963, he explains his choice with a personal memory. The rest is more difficult to decode, probably related to intimate feelings.
This unprecedented practice of blurred paintings on themes of extreme banality brings him fame and customers. He diversifies his techniques without losing his desire to shock, as for example with his Farbtafeln.
On November 13 in New York, Christie's sells one of the latest photo-paintings, oil on canvas 180 x 180 cm painted in 1967, lot 12 B estimated $ 18M.
This gray image shows the ferry from the Hamburg-Copenhagen transport line during the swallowing of a train, in a row between the terminal and the Baltic. Inaugurated four years before, this line named Vogelfluglinie is still a recent topic. The blur leads to the limits of readability.
Unique in Richter's imagery, this dehumanized picture comes in full opposition with his erotic and pornographic inspirations of the same period. The line of the bird flight could have been an invitation to travel beyond Germany. It is instead a witness to some repulsive ugliness in modern life. With Richter, everything seems simple but nothing is simple.
This unprecedented practice of blurred paintings on themes of extreme banality brings him fame and customers. He diversifies his techniques without losing his desire to shock, as for example with his Farbtafeln.
On November 13 in New York, Christie's sells one of the latest photo-paintings, oil on canvas 180 x 180 cm painted in 1967, lot 12 B estimated $ 18M.
This gray image shows the ferry from the Hamburg-Copenhagen transport line during the swallowing of a train, in a row between the terminal and the Baltic. Inaugurated four years before, this line named Vogelfluglinie is still a recent topic. The blur leads to the limits of readability.
Unique in Richter's imagery, this dehumanized picture comes in full opposition with his erotic and pornographic inspirations of the same period. The line of the bird flight could have been an invitation to travel beyond Germany. It is instead a witness to some repulsive ugliness in modern life. With Richter, everything seems simple but nothing is simple.
1968 Richter invents the Hyperrealistic Blur
2013 SOLD 37 M$ including premium
Gerhard Richter is the true rebel of art. Some artists before him including Rauschenberg had introduced disgust as a variant of artistic impression. Richter goes much further. He debases the art to reveal its profound nature.
In 1962, he considers that a bad photo does not lie because it is too ugly to deserve retouching. It expresses real life, the reality of a fleeting moment which had probably been important for its author.
The anti-art by Richter consists to disproportionately enlarge black and white photos, blurry and often without any interest but in a great variety, by using a hyperrealistic technique already perfectly controlled.
One of his earliest works is the image of an airplane in flight, magnified as an oil on canvas up to 130 x 200 cm. Made in 1963, it was sold for $ 11.2 million including premium by Christie's on November 13, 2007.
The strength of the anti-artistic message of Richter is so great and so new that he finds customers. Domplatz Mailand, an oil on canvas 275 x 290 cm painted in 1968, was commissioned by the Milanese offices of Siemens.
The image is a masterpiece of ugliness with a particularly unpleasant blur. The original photo was lost, thankfully! This photo by an unidentified tourist may be repeated by anyone, without blurring motion, with a more relevant composition than truncating both the cathedral on the right and the buildings on the left.
With this quality and its very large size, Mailand Domplatz is the culmination of the first period of Richter. On the following year, he managed to radically shake the established tradition of landscape painting.
Domplatz Mailand is estimated $ 30M, for sale by Sotheby's in New York on May 14. It is illustrated in a very interesting blog post shared by the auction house.
I invite you to watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
POST SALE COMMENT
This large painting is a technical feat of the first style of Richter, playing altogether on the easy identification of the subject and on the difficulty of reading it. It was sold $ 37M including premium.
In 1962, he considers that a bad photo does not lie because it is too ugly to deserve retouching. It expresses real life, the reality of a fleeting moment which had probably been important for its author.
The anti-art by Richter consists to disproportionately enlarge black and white photos, blurry and often without any interest but in a great variety, by using a hyperrealistic technique already perfectly controlled.
One of his earliest works is the image of an airplane in flight, magnified as an oil on canvas up to 130 x 200 cm. Made in 1963, it was sold for $ 11.2 million including premium by Christie's on November 13, 2007.
The strength of the anti-artistic message of Richter is so great and so new that he finds customers. Domplatz Mailand, an oil on canvas 275 x 290 cm painted in 1968, was commissioned by the Milanese offices of Siemens.
The image is a masterpiece of ugliness with a particularly unpleasant blur. The original photo was lost, thankfully! This photo by an unidentified tourist may be repeated by anyone, without blurring motion, with a more relevant composition than truncating both the cathedral on the right and the buildings on the left.
With this quality and its very large size, Mailand Domplatz is the culmination of the first period of Richter. On the following year, he managed to radically shake the established tradition of landscape painting.
Domplatz Mailand is estimated $ 30M, for sale by Sotheby's in New York on May 14. It is illustrated in a very interesting blog post shared by the auction house.
I invite you to watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
POST SALE COMMENT
This large painting is a technical feat of the first style of Richter, playing altogether on the easy identification of the subject and on the difficulty of reading it. It was sold $ 37M including premium.
1969 The Sublime Landscape of Gerhard Richter
2015 SOLD for £ 15.8M including premium
From his beginnings in the 1960s with his recuperation of blurry photos, Gerhard Richter questioned the meaning of art in the society. In parallel, he perfected his technique of brushstrokes to create subtle color variations that will characterize the rest of his career.
In 1969, he already appears both as an excellent practitioner and as a theorist. Admirer of Friedrich, Richter appreciates that the romantic paintings of landscapes are timeless because the landscapes have no soul. The fact that the most beautiful natural sites are universally considered as sublime is a paradox that the perfection of his own art will unveil, or rather denounce.
In his library of images, Richter chooses Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstätter See) in the violent backlighting of a cloudy day. All the elements converge for his purposed demonstration: the mountains in the shadow or in the fog, the variations of sky and water and the reflections on the lake.
The lines are blurred like the edges of Rothko's rectangles. Richter brings a sumptuous variation of shades by spreading a dry brush on the wet canvas, two decades before extending his use of the squeegee in abstract art.
His view of Lake Lucerne is supposed to compete altogether with nature and Turner. This oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm will be sold by Christie's in London on February 11, lot 8.
In 1969, he already appears both as an excellent practitioner and as a theorist. Admirer of Friedrich, Richter appreciates that the romantic paintings of landscapes are timeless because the landscapes have no soul. The fact that the most beautiful natural sites are universally considered as sublime is a paradox that the perfection of his own art will unveil, or rather denounce.
In his library of images, Richter chooses Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstätter See) in the violent backlighting of a cloudy day. All the elements converge for his purposed demonstration: the mountains in the shadow or in the fog, the variations of sky and water and the reflections on the lake.
The lines are blurred like the edges of Rothko's rectangles. Richter brings a sumptuous variation of shades by spreading a dry brush on the wet canvas, two decades before extending his use of the squeegee in abstract art.
His view of Lake Lucerne is supposed to compete altogether with nature and Turner. This oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm will be sold by Christie's in London on February 11, lot 8.
1969 Seestück
2012 SOLD for $ 19.3M by Christie's
Photography plays a major role in the early art of Richter. A refugee from East Germany into the West, he was first concerned with social identification. He recuperated trivial photographs into paintings in which he skillfully combined hyperrealistic techniques and blurring.
These first successes do not satisfy his need to express the subtlety of colors. He suddenly finds a new way in 1968 while taking holiday photos in Corsica. When the weather is cloudy, the horizon fades between sea and sky, and the weak diffusing light generates a variety of shades.
An admirer of the Romantic painters and more specifically of Caspar David Friedrich in the quest of the sublime, Richter comes in communion with the forces of a wild and uninhabited landscape.
Painted in 1969, Seestûck (leicht bewölkt), oil on canvas 200 x 200 cm, was sold for $ 19.3M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on May 8, 2012, lot 36. It had been prepared by using two photographs in fair weather, one for the low sky and one for the gently rippled sea with no visible land. Both elements are going abstract in a similar transparency. The horizon is clear.
The land reappears in a 1971 series at Tenerife.
These first successes do not satisfy his need to express the subtlety of colors. He suddenly finds a new way in 1968 while taking holiday photos in Corsica. When the weather is cloudy, the horizon fades between sea and sky, and the weak diffusing light generates a variety of shades.
An admirer of the Romantic painters and more specifically of Caspar David Friedrich in the quest of the sublime, Richter comes in communion with the forces of a wild and uninhabited landscape.
Painted in 1969, Seestûck (leicht bewölkt), oil on canvas 200 x 200 cm, was sold for $ 19.3M from a lower estimate of $ 10M by Christie's on May 8, 2012, lot 36. It had been prepared by using two photographs in fair weather, one for the low sky and one for the gently rippled sea with no visible land. Both elements are going abstract in a similar transparency. The horizon is clear.
The land reappears in a 1971 series at Tenerife.
1975 Seestück
2022 SOLD for $ 30M by Sotheby's
Gerhard Richter redefines art, appropriating shabby photos whose meaning is important to him or more often to nobody. He thus becomes a specialist in blurred images of monumental size.
However, he does not want to lose any filiation with the great masters of the past. The clouds catch his attention. Their shape and color are constantly changing and yet they are perfectly identifiable. Through the clouds, Richter finds Friedrich, Constable and Turner.
After trials in limited dimensions and quantities in 1968 and 1969, the artist explores more systematically the clouds in 1970. For this sole year, his catalogue raisonné includes fifteen paintings on this theme, with various effects : pink, blue, green blue, atmosphere, backlight, abstract.
Within this set the opus 266 titled Wolken (Fenster) is the most ambitious, and the only one to meet one of Richter's fundamental ambitions : to simulate an architectural environment.
This quadriptych of oils on canvas of individual dimension 200 x 100 cm appears like a large fragmented window which opens onto nothing. In turn, this nothingness takes on an emotional meaning by making the visitor believe that he sees the sky at sunset from the upper floors of a skyscraper, evaporating the city. This work anticipates the fragmented pools by David Hockney by almost ten years and the panels of snow-capped mountain scenery by Cui Ruzhuo by four decades.
Wolken (Fenster) was sold for £ 6.2M by Christie's on October 13, 2014 and for £ 10.4M by Sotheby's on July 28, 2020, lot 20.
In 1975 Gerhard Richter revisited his Seestück photo-painting series of 1969 by enlarging the canvas from a square 200 x 200 cm to a panoramic 200 x 300 cm. This extension to this larger size of the luminescent effect is a technical feat.
The out of focus of clouds and sea mingling through a faint horizon is an invite to the viewer to change his mind about visual perception. It is indeed.a step further by Richter in his quest of a personal total abstraction. The lack of focusing point within a monumental scale also leads to an illusion of movement and chance in the line of Riley's op art.
This new set is made of four paintings. One of them was sold for $ 30M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2022, lot 5.
However, he does not want to lose any filiation with the great masters of the past. The clouds catch his attention. Their shape and color are constantly changing and yet they are perfectly identifiable. Through the clouds, Richter finds Friedrich, Constable and Turner.
After trials in limited dimensions and quantities in 1968 and 1969, the artist explores more systematically the clouds in 1970. For this sole year, his catalogue raisonné includes fifteen paintings on this theme, with various effects : pink, blue, green blue, atmosphere, backlight, abstract.
Within this set the opus 266 titled Wolken (Fenster) is the most ambitious, and the only one to meet one of Richter's fundamental ambitions : to simulate an architectural environment.
This quadriptych of oils on canvas of individual dimension 200 x 100 cm appears like a large fragmented window which opens onto nothing. In turn, this nothingness takes on an emotional meaning by making the visitor believe that he sees the sky at sunset from the upper floors of a skyscraper, evaporating the city. This work anticipates the fragmented pools by David Hockney by almost ten years and the panels of snow-capped mountain scenery by Cui Ruzhuo by four decades.
Wolken (Fenster) was sold for £ 6.2M by Christie's on October 13, 2014 and for £ 10.4M by Sotheby's on July 28, 2020, lot 20.
In 1975 Gerhard Richter revisited his Seestück photo-painting series of 1969 by enlarging the canvas from a square 200 x 200 cm to a panoramic 200 x 300 cm. This extension to this larger size of the luminescent effect is a technical feat.
The out of focus of clouds and sea mingling through a faint horizon is an invite to the viewer to change his mind about visual perception. It is indeed.a step further by Richter in his quest of a personal total abstraction. The lack of focusing point within a monumental scale also leads to an illusion of movement and chance in the line of Riley's op art.
This new set is made of four paintings. One of them was sold for $ 30M by Sotheby's on May 16, 2022, lot 5.
1982 Drama in the Ice
2017 SOLD for £ 17.7M including premium
The Arctic landscapes by Gerhard Richter are associated with turning points in his personal life. In 1972 he made a ten-day cruise to Greenland to forget his professional and conjugal embarrassments and he shot almost abstract photos on the theme of light on ice. He liked to refer to the romantic work of Caspar David Friedrich evoking the heroic exploration of the Northwest Passage in the 1820s.
The situation is different in 1981. Richter divorces from Ema, his wife since 1957, and prepares his second marriage, with Isa. Recognizing that he is closing a phase of his life, he reminds his intense experience in Greenland, with the lifeless frozen sea in a light which is splendid by its uniformity.
He painted three oil paintings on this theme.
Eis, 70 x 100 cm, opus 476 painted in 1981, shows the ice blocks drifting up to the horizon in this world where human beings have no access. It was sold for £ 4,3M including premium by Sotheby's on February 15, 2012. Eisberg im Nebel, of same size, opus 496-1 made in 1982, is a study of fog on a free sea.
On March 8 in London, Sotheby's sells the largest of the three artworks, Eisberg, 101 x 151 cm, opus 496-2 painted in 1982, lot 8 estimated £ 8M. The composition is dominated by a towering iceberg over the horizon. On the sea the mountain is imperceptibly subject to movement at this key moment when the life of the artist is changing.
I do not think that the reference to Friedrich remains relevant at the time of the 1982 paintings. The artist is then fascinated by the diversity of light and by the challenge that it creates for the painter. The series of candles (Kerzen), much more ambitious, begins immediately afterward, opus 497-1 to 497-3, 498-1 to 498-4, 499-1 to 499-4 and later extensions.
The situation is different in 1981. Richter divorces from Ema, his wife since 1957, and prepares his second marriage, with Isa. Recognizing that he is closing a phase of his life, he reminds his intense experience in Greenland, with the lifeless frozen sea in a light which is splendid by its uniformity.
He painted three oil paintings on this theme.
Eis, 70 x 100 cm, opus 476 painted in 1981, shows the ice blocks drifting up to the horizon in this world where human beings have no access. It was sold for £ 4,3M including premium by Sotheby's on February 15, 2012. Eisberg im Nebel, of same size, opus 496-1 made in 1982, is a study of fog on a free sea.
On March 8 in London, Sotheby's sells the largest of the three artworks, Eisberg, 101 x 151 cm, opus 496-2 painted in 1982, lot 8 estimated £ 8M. The composition is dominated by a towering iceberg over the horizon. On the sea the mountain is imperceptibly subject to movement at this key moment when the life of the artist is changing.
I do not think that the reference to Friedrich remains relevant at the time of the 1982 paintings. The artist is then fascinated by the diversity of light and by the challenge that it creates for the painter. The series of candles (Kerzen), much more ambitious, begins immediately afterward, opus 497-1 to 497-3, 498-1 to 498-4, 499-1 to 499-4 and later extensions.
1982 Gelbgrün
2018 SOLD for £ 10.9M including premium by Sotheby's
Gerhard Richter redefines painting. He joins Malevich when he considers that an oil on canvas is a finished product which does not need figurative references. In the 1970s, he attempts several forms of abstraction, including gray monochromes and color charts.
1982 is a year of great experimentation. On the figurative side, Richter paints icebergs. The shapes and colors dissolve, in a smoother way than in the weird blurry photo-realisms of the previous phase. In the same year, the candles are a pretext to approach the full extent of the colored spectrum.
The step is quickly taken. Also in 1982, the artist paints abstractions in very large format. Opus 492, Gelbgrün, is a diptych measuring 260 x 400 cm overall, sold for £ 10.9M including premium by Sotheby's on March 7, 2018, lot 28.
On a light blue background, the artist added large floating shapes in strident yellow and bright green, through ample gestures inspired by Franz Kline's Action Painting. The squeegee appears as a complement to brush and knife for providing a semi-automatism.
These experiments are convincing, and abstractions become predominant in Richter's art.
The opus 573-1, Schwefel, oil on canvas 200 x 300 cm painted in 1985, was sold for $ 12.5M including premium by Sotheby's on November 14, 2018, lot 37, and is estimated HK $ 80M for sale by Sotheby's in Hong Kong on April 19, 2021, lot 1127.
The bright colors are more varied than in the example above, over a green background. The gestures are less ample, reducing the scarring effect. The composition is a clever mix between order and chaos. By this aspect, Schwefel is a precursor of the Abstraktes Bild 599, oil on canvas 300 x 250 cm painted in 1986, in which Richter adds the confrontation of horizontal and vertical. 599 was sold for £ 30.4M including premium by Sotheby's on February 10, 2015.
1982 is a year of great experimentation. On the figurative side, Richter paints icebergs. The shapes and colors dissolve, in a smoother way than in the weird blurry photo-realisms of the previous phase. In the same year, the candles are a pretext to approach the full extent of the colored spectrum.
The step is quickly taken. Also in 1982, the artist paints abstractions in very large format. Opus 492, Gelbgrün, is a diptych measuring 260 x 400 cm overall, sold for £ 10.9M including premium by Sotheby's on March 7, 2018, lot 28.
On a light blue background, the artist added large floating shapes in strident yellow and bright green, through ample gestures inspired by Franz Kline's Action Painting. The squeegee appears as a complement to brush and knife for providing a semi-automatism.
These experiments are convincing, and abstractions become predominant in Richter's art.
The opus 573-1, Schwefel, oil on canvas 200 x 300 cm painted in 1985, was sold for $ 12.5M including premium by Sotheby's on November 14, 2018, lot 37, and is estimated HK $ 80M for sale by Sotheby's in Hong Kong on April 19, 2021, lot 1127.
The bright colors are more varied than in the example above, over a green background. The gestures are less ample, reducing the scarring effect. The composition is a clever mix between order and chaos. By this aspect, Schwefel is a precursor of the Abstraktes Bild 599, oil on canvas 300 x 250 cm painted in 1986, in which Richter adds the confrontation of horizontal and vertical. 599 was sold for £ 30.4M including premium by Sotheby's on February 10, 2015.
1982 The Supreme Simplicity of Richter's Candle
2011 SOLD 10.5 M£ including premium
With his series of candles (Kerzen), Gerhard Richter reaches an apotheosis of the simplicity in art. The candle is short-lived, consumed by its own flame. This artefact of light has always been a symbol of life, hope, fragility, death, a mystical symbol which stands unanimously beyond all religions. The challenge of its light spectrum appealed the artist.
Richter candles are simple, but his art is not. The slim cylinder of tallow is contrasting with the halo of light and the voluntarily blurred background.
A candle painted by Richter in 1982, oil on canvas 83 x 62 cm, was sold for £ 10.5M from a lower estimate of £ 6M by Christie's on October 14, 2011.
The background evoking the light of a window corner is similar to the study of two candles made in the same year, oil on canvas 150 x 100 cm, sold for $ 13M by Christie's on November 10, 2010.
The single candle 95 x 90 cm sold for £ 8M by Sotheby's on February 27, 2008, was made in 1983 with a less dreamlike background and a less visible wick. This image was used for the cover of an album by Sonic Youth.
Richter candles are simple, but his art is not. The slim cylinder of tallow is contrasting with the halo of light and the voluntarily blurred background.
A candle painted by Richter in 1982, oil on canvas 83 x 62 cm, was sold for £ 10.5M from a lower estimate of £ 6M by Christie's on October 14, 2011.
The background evoking the light of a window corner is similar to the study of two candles made in the same year, oil on canvas 150 x 100 cm, sold for $ 13M by Christie's on November 10, 2010.
The single candle 95 x 90 cm sold for £ 8M by Sotheby's on February 27, 2008, was made in 1983 with a less dreamlike background and a less visible wick. This image was used for the cover of an album by Sonic Youth.
