'Painting pictures is simply the official, the daily work, the profession, and in the case of the watercolours I can sooner afford to follow my mood, my spirits.'
—Gerhard Richter
Emerging as one of Europe's first Pop artists, Richter went on to skilfully tackle a wide range of styles and mediums, including minimalist colour charts, photorealistic landscapes, photo-portraits, exuberant canvases, and expressive abstract works on paper. Navigating effortlessly between the diversity of his media, while never asserting one above the other, Richter has continuously focused his artistic research on the nature of imagery.
When speaking of his abstract works, Richter notes, ‘each picture has to evolve out of a painterly or visual logic. It has to emerge as if inevitable. By not planning the outcome, I hope to achieve the same coherence and objectivity that a random slice of nature always possesses.’i Untitled, 1977, perfectly translates Richter’s methodology and ability to combine obscure abstractions with sharp shapes like the cross-hatching over the multi-coloured horizontal layers. The present work is executed in Richter’s characteristic style with alluring, textured layers and eye-catching, striking combination of colours; particularly the orange-green which is contrasted by the electrifying blue, offering multi-dimensionality and depth to the composition.
Since the unpredictability of the outcome is the main factor in Richter’s technique of painting in watercolour, he employs the layering quality and rich pigment of the material in such a way as to allow it to blend across the paper in bright hues and unique forms and to find its own way across the paper, resulting in a process that is truly intimate. Richter’s way to stimulate the viewer’s optical and tactile sensations makes his oeuvre one of the most emotionally powerful explorations of abstraction.
