The World's Largest Modern & Contemporary Prints & Editions Platform
Abstraktes Foto - Signed Print by Gerhard Richter 1989 - MyArtBroker

Abstraktes Foto
Signed Print

Gerhard Richter

Price data unavailable

AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.

There aren't enough data points on this work for a comprehensive result. Please speak to a specialist by making an enquiry.

Medium: Photographic print

Edition size: 50

Year: 1989

Size: H 74cm x W 100cm

Signed: Yes

Format: Signed Print

TradingFloor

1 want this
Find out how Buying or Selling works.
Track this artwork in realtime

Watch artwork, manage valuations, track your portfolio and return against your collection

Track auction value trend

Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Foto, a signed photographic print from 1989, is estimated to be worth between £8,500 and £12,500. This artwork has an auction history of 11 total sales since its entry to the market in April 2004. In the last five years, the hammer price has ranged from £6,424 in March 2021 to £9,634 in December 2020. The average annual growth rate for this work is 6%. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 50.

Unlock up-to-the-minute market data on Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Foto, login or create a free account today

Auction Results

Auction DateAuction HouseLocation
Hammer Price
Return to Seller
Buyer Paid
March 2021Christie's New York United States
December 2020Sotheby's New York United States
April 2020Sotheby's London United Kingdom
January 2018Phillips London United Kingdom
October 2017Phillips New York United States
October 2015Phillips New York United States
April 2014Christie's New York United States

Meaning & Analysis

Like other works featured in Richter’s Abstract collection, such as Abstraktes Bild (1991) and Abstraktes Bild (P1) (1990), this print foregrounds the end product of the German artist’s loose, experimental approach to painting and composition. A swooping blend of dark grey and white, the print has its origins in Richter’s home-made squeegees. Made by hand by the artist’s two assistants at his studio on the outskirts of Cologne, Germany, these squeegees are adorned with varying hues of oil paint. They are then used to cover a base layer of block colour, applied directly to the canvas. The hues used are always ‘classics’, such cadmium and titanium white: working with earthy tones would diminish a given painting’s dramatic effect, Richter’s assistants have explained.

Referencing a painting completed during the late 1980s, the print was issued during a tumultuous period of the Dresden-born artist’s career. Just a year earlier, in 1988, Richter completed a series of 15 paintings entitled 18 October 1977. Ambiguous in nature, and characteristic of Richter’s signature approach to realism (often dubbed the Richter ‘blur’), the series portrays members of the Rote Armee Fraktion, or Baader Meinhof Gang: a terrorist organisation active in Germany and Europe between 1970 and 1998. The date referenced by the series title – the 18th of October 1977 – marks that on which three founding members of the group were found dead in their cells at Stuttgart’s high-security Stammheim Prison. These images, like many of Richter’s works, caused a storm for their uncompromising treatment of an uncomfortable episode in recent German history.