"I don’t have a specific image in mind; what I want is to end up with an image I hadn’t planned at all. In other words, this method—involving a mix of arbitrariness, chance, inspiration, and destruction—does indeed give rise to a certain type of image, but never a predetermined one. The resulting image should emerge from a painterly or visual logic, as if it were inevitable. […] I’d like to create something more interesting than what I can conceive of myself.” This is how Gerhard Richter described his abstract working process in 1990, a process that, by then, had been a central component of his oeuvre for more than a decade, since it took shape in 1976.

Immigration and artistic reorientation
Born in Dresden in 1932, Gerhard Richter is considered one of the most significant painters of German post-war art. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1951 to 1956. His visit to documenta II in Kassel in 1959 marked a pivotal point; the encounter with contemporary Western art triggered a fundamental reorientation of his approach to art. Subsequently, Richter moved to the Federal Republic of Germany and continued his studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, where he forged decisive artistic connections with Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg, and Manfred Kuttner. Influenced by his education in the context Socialist Realism in the GDR and by the experimental climate prevailing in the West, Richter developed an artistic practice that confidently oscillates between figuration and abstraction, between photography and painting, and between control and chance. By the early 1990s at the latest, he had gained international recognition following series such as “Candle Pictures” (1982–1983) and “October 18, 1977” (1988), without abandoning his ongoing exploration of painting's potentials and limitations.

“Grün-Blau-Rot” – beyond the realm of conscious invention
Created in 1993, the work “Green-Blue-Red” is part of a series of unique pieces conceived in collaboration with the Zurich art magazine “Parkett”. Even though it was designed as an edition, each work is a one-of-a-kind piece, putting Richter’s longstanding exploration of reproduction and authorship at its center. Since the 1960s, he has explored these questions in prints, photographs, and artist’s books, establishing a productive paradox: a seriality without repetition, an edition in which no two works are the same. He deliberately chose a title characterized by a sober clarity, naming the three colors in the order they were applied. The first layer is a luminous neon green, followed by a dark blue applied across the pictorial surface, and finally a radiant red. This process is carried out with the squeegee that Richter introduced in 1979—a narrow, flexible tool that enables him to pull, compress, and shift layers of paint across the image carrier. The resulting finish is marked by streaks, smudges, and compressions, which eliminate any trace of subjective signature in favor of a highly sensitive yet mechanical form of expression.

Despite the apparent clarity of this process, the result remains fundamentally unpredictable. Intricate veils of color stand alongside dense clusters of pigment, creating an image structure that oscillates between depth and surface. Luminous swaths of red and blue run through the green depths in undulating movements, creating a spatial ambivalence that defies a single interpretation. In this case, chance acts not merely as an incident, but as a guiding principle that allows Richter to relinquish complete control and let the painting emerge from its own internal logic. This corresponds to his endeavor to attain a result beyond conscious invention.

Between control and chance
Richter’s enduring commitment to abstraction manifests as a consistent exploration of the boundaries between representation and autonomous painterly practice, reflecting his fundamental inquiry into perception and the conditions under which images are created and understood. Even in works that appear entirely non-representational, this question remains present, as the viewer is confronted with tensions between visual impression and material texture.

This continuous artistic investigation has also received wide institutional acclaim, for example, in an extensive retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, which ran until March of this year and presented a total of 275 works spanning over six decades. It impressively demonstrates both the consistency and the complexity of his work. From blurred photographs to expansive abstract compositions, Richter’s oeuvre significantly shaped the discourse of contemporary painting.
Created during a phase of artistic mastery, “Green-Blue-Red” encompasses the central aspects of his work: control and chance, seriality and singularity, material process and perceptual ambiguity. With its multi-layered structure and fluid spatial logic, the work does not present a fixed image, but rather an open field of experience in which meaning continually emerges and recedes. [KA]