Sale: 545 / Evening Sale, Dec. 08. 2023 in Munich Lot 63


63
Gerhard Richter
Grün-Blau-Rot, 1993.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 200,000 / $ 220,000
Sold:
€ 431,800 / $ 474,980

(incl. surcharge)
Grün-Blau-Rot. 1993.
Oil on canvas.
Butin 81. Elger 789-61. Signed, dated and inscribed "789-61" on the reverse, as well with the stamped inscription "Edition for Parkett No. 35" on the stretcher. 30 x 40 cm (11.8 x 15.7 in).
Published by the art magazine Parkett, Zürich (edition of issue no. 35, March 1993).
• Unique object.
• Richter redefined abstract painting with the use of the squeegee.
• The artist makes chance a principle of creation.
• The series "Grün-Blau-Rot" is among his most sought-after works
.

PROVENANCE: Parkett, 1993.
Collectio Dr. Helmut Schäfer, Cologne.
Private collection Berlin .

EXHIBITION: Silent & Violent: Selected Artists' Editions, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, USA, March 19 - Augus 31, 1995.
Collaborations with Parkett: 1984 to Now, MoMA, New York, USA, April 5 - June 5, 2001.
Beautiful Productions: Parkett Editions since 1984, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, June 21 - October 28, 2002.
Parkett - 20 Years of Artists' Collaborations, Kunsthaus Zürich, November 26, 2004 - February 13, 2005.
200 Artworks - 25 Years, Artists' Editions for Parkett, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan), September 4 - September 26. 2009
Gerhard Richter. Edizioni 1965-2012 dalla Collezione Olbricht, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2013.

LITERATURE: Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter. Catalogue raisonné, vol. 4: 1988-1994, Ostfildern 2015, no. 789-16.
Hubertus Butin, Gerhard Richter. Editionen 1965-2013, Cologne 2014, no. 81.
Parkett Art magazine, no. 35, 1993, in collaboration with Gerhard Richter (color illu. on p. 98).
Galerie Ludorff: 40 Jahre 40 Meisterwerke, Düsseldorf 2015, p. 97.
Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter. Catalogue Raisonné 1988-1994, vol. 4 (no. 652-1 to 805-6), Ostfildern 2015, cat. no. 789-45, pp. 524/525 (with color illu. p. 524, installation view).
Folkwang Museum (ed.), Gerhard Richter: Die Editionen, Essen, 2017, p. 58.
Hubertus Butin, Gerhard Richter. Unikate in Serie / Unique Pieces in Series, Cologne, 2017, pp. 136-137.



Gerhard Richter's "Abstract Pictures" were created from 1976 onward and form the most extensive group of works in his oeuvre by numbers. In addition to drawings, watercolors, paintings and spatial installations, editions make up a key part of his work. The numerous prints, photo editions and, last but not least, editions of oil paintings are not a kind of 'special form of artistic expression' in Richter‘s oeuvre, as it has been the case with many other artists since the mid-1960s. Owing to the various media that Richter uses, they are part of his encyclopedic system of pictorial methods. A common feature of his works from different genres is the integration of the principle of chance, which he makes both tool and method. This method gives Richter the freedom to step back as a subject and leave material and color be the determining force, an approach that decisively determined his artistic creation. "By accepting chance as the proceedings that go far beyond my imagination, beyond all understanding in general, I am assuming the role of someone who can only react to it, but who can still make something out of it in spite of all powerlessness, so far reaching that it no longer is coincidence. And then you have a new coincidence. " (Gerhard Richter, quoted from: Kerstin Küster, Farbe und Schichtung. Abstrakte Bilder 1986-2005, in: Gerhard Richter. Abstraktion, ex. cat. Museum Barberini, June 30 - October 21, 2020, p. 173) The edition "Grün-Blau-Rot" is also subject to this principle. The title states both the three colors and the order in which Richter applied them to the small individual canvases for the Swiss art magazine "Parkett". The artist covered the primed canvas with the squeegee in a strong green, then covers the result with a very dark blue, followed by the bright red. Of course, Richter weights the color fields, gives preference to an almost balanced red-blue composition and creates an inspired illusion of space and thus a value for the composition. Richter has been working with the squeegee since the late 1970s. The squeegee is a narrow piece of plastic the artist uses to distribute the paint on the canvas. Depending on the application of the paint, it usually leaves thin, smoothly warped layers of paint that replace or even exclude the individual brushstroke. With the use of the squeegee, Richter developed an independent technique; the result opened up unimagined possibilities of a purely formal structure inherent in the picture, with which Richter redefined the subject of abstraction in painting. [SM]



63
Gerhard Richter
Grün-Blau-Rot, 1993.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 200,000 / $ 220,000
Sold:
€ 431,800 / $ 474,980

(incl. surcharge)