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Lot Essay
'The abstract works are my presence, my reality, my problems, my difficulties and contradictions.' —Gerhard Richter
Engulfed in sweeping incandescent red, Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild transforms the canvas into a vast, luminescent field of sensation and restless energy. It is a sumptuous red canvas encapsulating the artist’s lifelong interrogation of the painterly process, which has been held in the same private collection for over a decade. The subject of a recent major retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Richter was described by one reviewer as an ‘electrifying genius’ whose paintings attempt to tackle the impossibility of living (A. Searle, ‘“Made my hair fly up”: the electrifying genius of Paris’s Gerhard Richter extravaganza – review,’ The Guardian, October 21, 2026, online [accessed: 2/24/2026]). Here, in the present work, the artist employs vibrant colour and the physical disruption of the painted surface to produce a searing painting that challenges accepted notions of contemporary art. Throughout his long career, Richter has pursued a diverse and influential practice that have probed the possibilities of paint, and the present work is a rare example in which the artist pursues his signature technique to its ultimate conclusion.
This majestic canvas is almost entirely enveloped in warm, rich tones of red; while the work’s complexity lies the multi-coloured strata buried beneath. Richter’s signature ‘squeegee’ technique — in which the artist drags a large, flat edged implement across the surface of the paint as it dries—effectively peels back this crimson veil, resulting in a myriad of subtle shifts in this striking colour, which ranges from intense crimson, through bright vermilion to a deep Venetian red, revealing the hidden depth of the underlying coloured layers. Richter’s technique results in small separations in the paint surface, allowing the viewer to see the intricacies of Richter’s process at first hand. In Abstraktes Bild, these result in a tantalizing flash of white pigment centrally in the upper third of the composition. Evoking the sun peaking over the horizon at daybreak, it nonetheless grounds the viewer directly in the heart of the canvas.
Richter first began his ‘abstract’ paintings in 1976 — initially as a counterpoint to his early photo-realist paintings — but it wasn’t until 1991 that he began working on the small group of abstract paintings predominantly featuring the colour red that would prove to be the apotheosis of his paintings of this type. The present work is one of 27 existing paintings, of which three are in institutional collections. This followed a period of intense exploration of colour, including a commission for the Hypo-Bank in Dusseldorf which featured colour mirrors. By this time his use of the squeegee had increased, and throughout the early 1990s his paintings were increasingly created using this careful process of disruption.
‘For about a year now, I have not been able to anything in my painting but scrape off, pile on and then removed again,’ the artist has said in 1992 a few months after the present work was completed. ‘In this process I don’t actually reveal what was beneath. If I wanted to do that, I would have to think what to reveal (figurative pictures or signs or patterns); that is pictures that might as well be produced directly. It would also be something of a symbolic trick: bringing to light the lost, buried pictures, or something to that effect. The process of applying, destroying, and layering serves only to achieve a more technical repertoire in picture-making’ (G. Richter, quoted in D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago, 2009, p. 267).
Richter’s generous application of paint in the present work is evidence of the sheer joy he found in the purity of this painterly process. Unfettered by any requirement for representation, the process is, for Richter, almost akin to a religious experience. As he once said, ‘Art is the pure realisation of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. All other realisations of these, outstanding human qualities, abuse those qualities by exploiting them; that is, by serving an ideology. Even art becomes “applied art” just as it gives up its freedom from function and sets out to convey a message. Art is only human in the absolute refusal to make a statement. The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality.’ (G. Richter, quoted in H.-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter. The Daily Practice of Painting, London, 1995, p. 170).
This example is notable for its generous use of red, one of the most auspicious pigments used in art. In Western art it is one of the oldest pigments in use, with evidence that Stone Age hunters and gatherers used red clay to make body paint. Later, it came to represent power, love, and life-giving blood. It was also used to convey emotion and psychological intensity. In Asian cultures, red is the colour of vitality, passion, and good fortune and celebration. The Chinese have long celebrated the colour for its associations with fire, the sun, the heart, and the southern direction — all positive forces of energy.
A triumphal celebration of painterly expression, standing before Abstraktes Bild can be as evocative an experience as standing before the masterworks of Mark Rothko. Rothko once said that ‘…he wanted a presence, so when you turned your back to the painting, you would feel the presence the way you feel the sun on your back’ (M. Israel, quoted by J. Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography, Chicago, 1993, p. 275). Just as Rothko believed his work evoked an ‘otherworldliness,’ Richter's abstract paintings are the physical and painterly manifestation of the artist's belief in art as mankind's highest form of hope.
Engulfed in sweeping incandescent red, Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild transforms the canvas into a vast, luminescent field of sensation and restless energy. It is a sumptuous red canvas encapsulating the artist’s lifelong interrogation of the painterly process, which has been held in the same private collection for over a decade. The subject of a recent major retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Richter was described by one reviewer as an ‘electrifying genius’ whose paintings attempt to tackle the impossibility of living (A. Searle, ‘“Made my hair fly up”: the electrifying genius of Paris’s Gerhard Richter extravaganza – review,’ The Guardian, October 21, 2026, online [accessed: 2/24/2026]). Here, in the present work, the artist employs vibrant colour and the physical disruption of the painted surface to produce a searing painting that challenges accepted notions of contemporary art. Throughout his long career, Richter has pursued a diverse and influential practice that have probed the possibilities of paint, and the present work is a rare example in which the artist pursues his signature technique to its ultimate conclusion.
This majestic canvas is almost entirely enveloped in warm, rich tones of red; while the work’s complexity lies the multi-coloured strata buried beneath. Richter’s signature ‘squeegee’ technique — in which the artist drags a large, flat edged implement across the surface of the paint as it dries—effectively peels back this crimson veil, resulting in a myriad of subtle shifts in this striking colour, which ranges from intense crimson, through bright vermilion to a deep Venetian red, revealing the hidden depth of the underlying coloured layers. Richter’s technique results in small separations in the paint surface, allowing the viewer to see the intricacies of Richter’s process at first hand. In Abstraktes Bild, these result in a tantalizing flash of white pigment centrally in the upper third of the composition. Evoking the sun peaking over the horizon at daybreak, it nonetheless grounds the viewer directly in the heart of the canvas.
Richter first began his ‘abstract’ paintings in 1976 — initially as a counterpoint to his early photo-realist paintings — but it wasn’t until 1991 that he began working on the small group of abstract paintings predominantly featuring the colour red that would prove to be the apotheosis of his paintings of this type. The present work is one of 27 existing paintings, of which three are in institutional collections. This followed a period of intense exploration of colour, including a commission for the Hypo-Bank in Dusseldorf which featured colour mirrors. By this time his use of the squeegee had increased, and throughout the early 1990s his paintings were increasingly created using this careful process of disruption.
‘For about a year now, I have not been able to anything in my painting but scrape off, pile on and then removed again,’ the artist has said in 1992 a few months after the present work was completed. ‘In this process I don’t actually reveal what was beneath. If I wanted to do that, I would have to think what to reveal (figurative pictures or signs or patterns); that is pictures that might as well be produced directly. It would also be something of a symbolic trick: bringing to light the lost, buried pictures, or something to that effect. The process of applying, destroying, and layering serves only to achieve a more technical repertoire in picture-making’ (G. Richter, quoted in D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago, 2009, p. 267).
Richter’s generous application of paint in the present work is evidence of the sheer joy he found in the purity of this painterly process. Unfettered by any requirement for representation, the process is, for Richter, almost akin to a religious experience. As he once said, ‘Art is the pure realisation of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. All other realisations of these, outstanding human qualities, abuse those qualities by exploiting them; that is, by serving an ideology. Even art becomes “applied art” just as it gives up its freedom from function and sets out to convey a message. Art is only human in the absolute refusal to make a statement. The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality.’ (G. Richter, quoted in H.-U. Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter. The Daily Practice of Painting, London, 1995, p. 170).
This example is notable for its generous use of red, one of the most auspicious pigments used in art. In Western art it is one of the oldest pigments in use, with evidence that Stone Age hunters and gatherers used red clay to make body paint. Later, it came to represent power, love, and life-giving blood. It was also used to convey emotion and psychological intensity. In Asian cultures, red is the colour of vitality, passion, and good fortune and celebration. The Chinese have long celebrated the colour for its associations with fire, the sun, the heart, and the southern direction — all positive forces of energy.
A triumphal celebration of painterly expression, standing before Abstraktes Bild can be as evocative an experience as standing before the masterworks of Mark Rothko. Rothko once said that ‘…he wanted a presence, so when you turned your back to the painting, you would feel the presence the way you feel the sun on your back’ (M. Israel, quoted by J. Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography, Chicago, 1993, p. 275). Just as Rothko believed his work evoked an ‘otherworldliness,’ Richter's abstract paintings are the physical and painterly manifestation of the artist's belief in art as mankind's highest form of hope.