This almost monochrome red work by Gerhard Richter from 1979 occupies a special place within his oeuvre. It is one of his early “Abstract Paintings,” which Richter began in the late 1970s. During this transitional period, the artist increasingly abandoned the figurative imagery of his well-known photographic paintings and strove for a radical opening toward a free, non-representational style. Therefore, the 1970s may be interpreted as a pivotal point in his career. What is typical of this creative phase is the tension between planned composition and gestural expression, while Richter's later abstract works are characterized by, for example, complex overpainting.
The present work is an impressive commentary on this radical change. The partly impasto red paint generates a dense, meditative atmosphere and makes for an immediate physical presence in which the color stands out as a pure means of expression. The texture of the paint application is quite unusual and intentionally made to look like woodchip wallpaper. He varies this in only a few paintings, using two color schemes: predominantly red (catalogue raisonné numbers 448-1 to 4) and beige with green (448-5 to 6). He revisited this theme in a much larger format in the two spatial works “Strich (auf Blau)” (451) and “Strich (auf Rot)” (WVZ 452) commissioned by the Soest district vocational school.
The color red is of central importance in this context: red symbolizes energy, transformation, and emotions, but it is also a signal color that inevitably draws the viewer's gaze into the depths of the pictorial space. The reduction to this color, except for a few green accents, creates an expressive power. At the same time, it can be seen as a reference to Richter's intense engagement with painting—with color, surface, and structure. Our “Abstract Painting” also shows traces of the artist's search for a new approach, in which openness to chance and a conscious renunciation of identifiable forms play a central role and lend the work a very special aesthetic quality. Our painting is a fascinating art-historical document within the context of Gerhard Richter's oeuvre and a testimony to the artistic transformation of one of the most important painters of our time. [MH]