Oil on canvas
Butin 81. Catalog raisonné of paintings 789/106. Signed, dated and inscribed "789-106" on verso, as well as with stamped inscription "Edition for Parkett No. 35" on stretcher. Copy 106/115. 29,5 x 39,5 cm (11,6 x 15,5 in)
Released by the art magazine 'Parkett, Zürich' (issue no 35, March 1993).

PROVENANCE: Private collection Southern Germany.

After his studies of painting in Dresden from 1951 to 1956 and the three years that followed as a master-class student at the Academy, Richter emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany. From 1961 to 1963 he studied under Karl Otto Götz at the Duesseldorf Academy of Arts. It is there that he became friends with Sigmar Polke, Blinky Palermo and Konrad Lueg - who was later known as the art dealer Konrad Fischer - with whom he performed the "Demonstration For Capitalist Realism" as a German version of Pop Art in 1963. In 1962, influenced by Giacometti and Dubuffet, he started with representational paintings based on photographs. This was the result of a changed view on art, which, according to Richter, "has nothing to do with painting, composition or color". His first solo exhibitions took place in 1964 at the galleries of Heiner Friedrich in Munich and Alfred Schmela in Duesseldorf. In 1967 Richter became guest lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg and in 1971 he was offered a chair at the Academy of Arts in Duesseldorf, which he held until 1996. With his color field series from 1971 to 1974, in which the artist used facets of the four primary colors in arbitrary combinations as well as his monochrome gray paintings of 1972-1975, Richter made decisive painterly components his subject. In 1976 Richter started to do abstract pictures with colored streaks, but nevertheless returned to representationalism time and again and turned the alternation between techniques of representation and stylistic incongruity into a principle.

While the abstract works from the late 1970s and 1980s, such as the painting "Vögel" (WVZ 509, 1984) conjure up figurative associations through their title and formulaic abbreviated ciphers, Richter attains to abandon figuration entirely in his abstract works from the 1990s. That was the time when Richter began to work the canvas with a coating knife, thus he did not only banish all figurative associations from his work, but also the artistic hand, the brush’s duct. In doing so he transfers the particular disguising fuzziness that had already been so characteristic of his figurative works to his abstract œuvre. The conceived color application trails away in a seemingly coincidental color haze behind which the original composition can only be guessed. These engrossed creations from the 1990s were enhanced to become impressive depictions of the clandestine. Next to Richter‘s contribution for the 47\up5 th Venice Biennale, for which he was awarded the Golden Lion, his abstract works were also shown on the 1997 documenta X in Kassel and in a single exhibition in the Lenbachhaus in Munich.

In 1997 his "Atlas" - a systematic collection of photographs and painted sketches - was exhibited a the documenta X in Kassel. Today Gerhard Richter is regarded as one of the internationally best known and most successful contemporary artists, whose works are appreciated by a wide audience on numerous exhibitions. [JS].