Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter’s oeuvre of works on paper – watercolours, pencil or graphite drawings, brush studies in India ink, oils on paper and overpainted photographs – only began to be exhibited to the public in the mid- and late 1980s.

The present sheet is part of a small and distinctive group of twenty-four abstract compositions on paper, drawn in a rich black India ink, produced by Gerhard Richter in late June and July of 1991. (Twelve of the drawings, including the present sheet, were exhibited alongside recent works on paper by Richard Long and Lawrence Weiner at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in London in 1992.) As Barbara Steffen has noted of this series of ink drawings by Richter, ‘These works are concerned with the observation of dripping black ink, its various layers, and the splashes that form a path across the picture plane following the principles of chance. They are about highly differentiated techniques of glazing, of allowing the ink to run, and of abstractly shaping the sheet. Attention is focused on the material – india ink – and on the fact that everything can be glazed in black to produce a plexus that consists entirely of uncontrolled forms of abstract shapes. By producing a drawing of black india ink in a manner that recalls a black watercolor, Richter dissolves the boundary between the categories of drawing and watercolor. India ink is made from extremely fine lampblack and a binding agent such as gelatin or glue. After this mixture has dried and solidified, it is mixed with water for use. Richter dispenses with the historical approach to india ink and uses it precisely as lightly as he uses watercolors in his abstract paintings. By producing works of glazed india ink that look like casual watercolors, he takes aim at the classical use of india ink.’

Of the twenty-three other India ink and wash drawings from the same series, three examples are today in the collections of both the Kunstmuseum in Wintherthur and the Carré d’Art - Musée d’art contemporain in Nîmes, while one is in the Deutsche Bank Collection and the remainder are in private collections.