Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter b. 1932

Mathis signed, numbered and dated ‘544-1 Richter 1983’ on the reverse oil on canvas

200 x 200 cm (78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in.)

Painted in 1983.

Estimate

£10,000,000 – 15,000,000 ‡ ♠ plus Buyers Premium and VAT, ARR applies*

Provenance

Galerie Liliane & Michel Durand-Dessert, Paris

Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1998

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie Liliane & Michel Durand-Dessert, Gerhard Richter, 25 February – 31 March 1984

Literature

Gerhard Richter, exh. cat., Musée d’Art et d’Industrie, Saint Etienne, January – February 1984, pp. 39, 41 (illustrated)

Ulrich Loock and Denys Zacharopoulos, Gerhard Richter, Munich, 1985, p. 100 (illustrated)

Jürgen Harten and Dietmar Elger, eds., Gerhard Richter: Bilder / Paintings 1962-1985, Cologne, 1986, no. 544/1, pp. 289, 398 (illustrated)

Suzanne Pagé, Wenzel Jacob, Björn Springfield, Kasper

König and Benjamin H. Buchloh, Gerhard Richter: Werkübersicht / Catalogue raisonné 1962-1993, Band III / Volume III, Bonn, 1993, no. 544-1, p. 176 (illustrated, n.p.)

Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 3, Nos. 389-651-2, 1976-1987, Ostfildern, 2013, no. 544-1, p. 365 (illustrated)

Heinrich Miess, Die Freiheit der Dinge: Ergänzungen zu Gerhard Richters Werkserie 48 Portraits, Bielefeld, 2018, p. 116 (illustrated)

*The amount of Buyer’s Premium, VAT and, if applicable, Artist Resale Royalties is dependent on the sale outcome. For full details see the London Auction Buyer’s Guide available on-line at Phillips.com

Muscular, dynamic, and pulsing with vitality, Mathis is a truly exceptional work from perhaps the most important period in German artist Gerhard Richter’s practice as he consolidated his relationship to abstraction and pushed it into radical new territory in the closing decades of the 20th century. Coming to auction for the first time, this important work was acquired by visionary French collector Marcel Brient, forming a centrepiece in his esteemed collection for over 20 years.

The first and structurally most complex of a subset of four abstract canvases executed in the same large, square format, Mathis possesses a rare intensity and fierceness. While all four canvases are characterised by their stunning, bold colours, and a remarkable interplay of geometric structure, softer gradients, and streams of freer, intuitive marks, the sense of spatial construction is especially pronounced here. Against this architectural sense of form, the softer fluctuations of the underlying sulphurous yellows and green gradients dance against the more gestural sections marked out in unmixed streaks of magenta and blue. Luminous and sharply delineated, the diamond form at the centre of the composition is traversed by free-flowing incised lines, generating a remarkably choreographic quality well-suited to the disarming shifts in surface texture that emerge as the result of Richter’s innovative introduction of the raking squeegee technique sparingly employed alongside more conventional brushwork here.

Executed in 1983, less than 10 years after the creation of his very first Abstraktes Bild and his first, tentative experiments with the squeegee technique that would come to dominate his abstract paintings after 1986, this key, transitional work belongs to what are sometimes referred to as Richter’s ‘Wild Abstracts’ which, as Robert Storr has suggested, radically redefined the painter previously wellknown for his monochromatic photorealist paintings as ‘one of the great colourists of late 20th century painting.’

Evolution of Abstraction: Richter in the 1980s

Although it might be tempting to attempt to draw a clear distinction between Richter’s explosive abstractions and the muted grey tones of his earlier photorealist paintings, Richter’s journey into colourful abstraction was anything but linear, involving complex exchanges and interrogations as he focussed his attention on complicating the dialogue that he saw operating between abstraction and representation. Actively encouraging these conversations, Richter demonstrated a preference for exhibiting his masterful landscapes of the late 1970s and early 80s alongside the growing body of Abstraktes Bilder, explaining that ‘if the abstract pictures show my reality, then the landscapes and still-lifes show my yearning.’

This was a strategy that Richter would continue as he started working on his iconic Kerzen (Candles) and Schädel (Skulls) between 1982 and 83. Indeed, when Mathis was included in the eponymous 1984 exhibition with Liliane & Michel DurandDessert in Paris with nine further ‘Wild Abstracts’ from the period, they were shown alongside a selection of five Kerzen and Schädel paintings - most of which are now housed in eminent public collections - the luminous colour contrasts marking a striking counterpoint to the serene and exquisitely rendered still lifes. Looking more closely, it is even possible to trace visual echoes of certain structural or compositional elements between the compositions, the darker passage in the lower section of Mathis visually corresponding to the denuded background space of the Kerzen and Schädel works, while the flame of the candle is echoed in the luminous rhomboid form glowing at the centre of the present work.