Untitled

Details

With a written expertise by Hubertus Butin, Berlin, dated 02.06.2020.

Provenance:

Phillips, New York 14 November 2000, lot 179;

Private collection, West Germany, inherited by the former owner;

Private collection, Southern Germany.

Description

– Subtle work with an extremely attractive, pastose surface texture

– Evocative of the motif of the Swiss Alps, which repeatedly appears in Richter’s oeuvre

– This year, Gerhard Richter is once again listed as the world’s most important artist in the “Art Compass” ranking

In this painterly experiment, Gerhard Richter works with the colours grey and white. As is often the case in the artist’s work, he does not do this with a brush, but uses a squeegee, a flat, broad, spatula-like tool. In this case, the tool served as a colour carrier. White and grey oil paint was applied very thickly to the carrier surface and then applied to the thin cardboard using a squeegee. When the tool and cardboard are separated, the abstract composition is constituted independently and without the intervention of the artist. It is merely the experiment that Gerhard Richter sets in motion; he allows himself to be surprised by the result. White and grey adhere differently depending on how they are applied; the solid consistency of the paint causes streaks that dry into a vertical, fine-grained, richly branched structure of lines.