Gerhard Richter’s spellbinding ‘Abstraktes Bild’ (‘Abstract Painting’) encapsulates his seminal contribution to the development of non-figurative art. Created in 1987, ‘Abstraktes Bild’ belongs to a renowned group of works from this pivotal year, which are considered amongst Richter’s most important and accomplished paintings.

Closely related abstractions from 1987 can be found in significant museum collections around the globe, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The National Museum of Art in Osaka, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which opens one of the largest ever retrospectives of Richter’s works in Paris this October.

Initiated in 1976, the Abstract Paintings comprise the most extensive, and arguably most innovative, body of works in Richter’s oeuvre. Over the course of the 1980s, he continued to develop and refine the series, initially with small-format works, followed by his hallmark monumental canvases painted with his iconic squeegee technique.

As ‘Abstraktes Bild’ strikingly showcases, Richter had fully mastered his new technique by 1987. By varying the direction, angle and speed at which he dragged the squeegee across his canvas, as well as taking advantage of the distinctive drying rates of different colors of oil paint, Richter was able to construct an astonishing variety of painterly surfaces.

With its mesmerising veils of color and kaleidoscope of textures, ‘Abstraktes Bild’ is a powerful testament to Richter’s pioneering revitalisation of abstraction. A remarkable work from a key moment in Richter’s oeuvre, it condenses into one extraordinary painting the artist’s ingenious invention of new kinds of abstract visual techniques.