Abstraktes Bild

'The idiosyncratic density of the Abstract Paintings [by Richter] arises from this procedure, which combines conscious artistic invention...with processes of destruction which negate their intervention because their outcome cannot be completely contolled by the artist's overpainting, scraping and scratching of the layered paint...Richter's paintings can be understood as a form of communication which is cancelled in the very act, even though the painter's desire to communicate with his viewers via his paintings persists. The melancholy character of such a production stems from a simultaneous awareness of the necessity of utopia - Richter has called his painting 'the highest form of hope'- and recognition of its inaccessibility... Whatever motivated the creation of the Abstract Paintings cannot be deduced from the finished canvas, since it is subjected to a process of revealing while concealing, which is a particular characteristic of Richter's production' (M. Hentschel, On shifting Terrain: Looking at Richter's Abstract Paintings, Gerhard Richter, exh. cat. London, 1998, p. 31).