Picture "Abstract Photo" (1978)

This edition, "Abstract Photo," by the artist was created after the painting "Abstract Painting", which he completed in 1989. It stands as a representative example of the painter's and graphic artist's approach - a playful handling of sources, media, photographs, and their transformation into a work of art.

Black-and-white photograph on plastic plate with white passe-partout, 1989. Edition: 50 copies marked with Arabic numerals (offered here), signed and dated, 7 copies numbered in Roman numerals, signed and dated. Created after the work "Abstract Picture, 1989". Catalogue raisonné Butin 69. Motif size/sheet size 50 x 70 cm. Size in frame 69 x 88 cm as shown.

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A portrait of the renowned contemporary artist Gerhard Richter

About Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter has been in first place in the Art Compass year after year since 2004. Only once, in 2009, did Georg Baselitz - otherwise consistently in second place - displace Gerhard Richter from his top position.

And in 2024, Richter is once again in first place in the ranking of the world's most sought-after contemporary artists.

The Art Compass has been published in different magazines every fall since 1970, most recently in Capital magazine. It measures and evaluates solo exhibitions in internationally renowned museums and art institutes, participation in group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale and reviews in renowned art magazines.

"I pursue no intentions, no system, no direction; I have no programm, no style, no mission." With these words, one of the most successful and versatile artists of our time describes himself - Gerhard Richter.

Born in Dresden, Germany, in 1932, Richter left his hometown two months before the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and went to West Germany to continue his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. The young artist attracted attention with his photo-realistic paintings of motifs straight out of the family album. In a time and environment in which experimental, abstract art was predominant, Richter's paintings caused a sensation.

Richter's characteristic seems to be to look for new modes of expression whenever a method he explored has successfully established itself on the art market. His figurative painting in grey was followed by monochrome grey paintings and the coloured "Vermalung" (Inpainting) that made the pictorial motif unrecognisable. In the mid-1970s, he got involved in abstraction, no less successfully than with his previous works.

Versatility extends through Gerhard Richter's entire oeuvre. He is not "only" a painter, but also a sculptor and photographer, he draws, paints in watercolours, does performances and installations. His photographs and prints are now just as sought-after as his paintings, with high prices included. His paintings take up the room and are created with full physical effort.

His fame and the high prices are sometimes scary for the artist himself, as he freely admitted in an interview with Die Zeit in 2015. However, this does not detract from the popularity of his works. Richter is an artist who, despite his outstanding status, has remained true to himself and prefers to let his art speak instead of stage-managing himself.

In 2011, his oil painting "Kerze" (Candle) from 1982 sold for almost 12 million euros at Christie's London. The painting belongs to a series that Richter painted in the early 1980s in his slightly blurred, photorealistic style. It is considered a symbol of East Germany (GDR) citizens' silent protest against the socialist regime and became one of Richter's most famous motifs.

The most important private collector of Gerhard Richter is the British musician Eric Clapton, who owns more than 50 works. And this even though Richter's works are the most expensive of any living artist on the art market. The canvas "Abstraktes Bild" (Abstract Picture) from 1986 was sold at Sotheby's for 41 million euros. And even some of Richter's graphic works are already being traded in the six-figure range.

Gerhard Richter was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, the Nobel Prize for the arts, in 1997 and, as special recognition, a comprehensive retrospective at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2002. With 188 works, it was the largest ever dedicated to a living artist.

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Term for paintings and sculptures that are detached from representational depiction, which spread across the entire western world and parts of the eastern world from around 1910 onwards in ever new stylistic variations. The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, born in 1866, is considered the founder of abstract art. Other important artists of abstract art are K.S. Malewitsch, Piet Mondrian, and others.

The field of graphic arts, that includes artistic representations, which are reproduced by various printing techniques.

Printmaking techniques include woodcuts, copperplate engraving, etching, lithography, serigraphy, among others.

A process for producing images by the action of light, which became widely known in 1839. Photography quickly became the basis for the expanding image industry that pushed the manually produced pictures, paintings and drawings aside.

The avant-garde painting adopted photographic form elements, to restore the painting’s rightful significance. In the 1920s, many avant-garde painters devoted themselves to photography. With his photographs and photomontages, called "rayographs", the American painter Man Ray developed new means of expression in modern art.

The Pop Art of the 1960s varied and alienated the public photograph through technical means. The American pop artist Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) is the most famous master of this art movement with his images and image series created in this way.