Over the course of a decade, the works will be exhibited in the galleries Phillips of Hong Kong in the St George's Building from 25 March to 12 April, coinciding with the city's Art Month. The occasion will highlight Richter's works based on the outstanding abstract and photorealistic work.
Miety Heiden, vice president and head of private sales at Phillips said: “Probably the most successful and celebrated painter today, the works of Gerhard Richter bring together the most disparate and contradictory elements. The wide variety of his continuous artistic output has allowed him to master the fundamental principles of his medium. We are delighted to offer viewers the opportunity to engage with his most famous published photorealistic pieces and abstract works in the vibrant Asian art hub.”
Highlighting the exhibit is Abstract picture, a monumental and sublime example of Richter's series of abstract paintings. Beginning in the 60s, he redirected his attention to abstraction. In the 80s, Richter made his first painting using a squeegee; this instrument would come to define his abstract works of art thereafter. The squeegee allowed Richter to expose and obscure various layers of overpaint and paint beneath his compositions, producing compositional nuances impossible to achieve with a brush alone.
A further emphasis is Annunciation after Titian, a print based on Richter's famous 1973 series of the same title. Smell Titian's blur, transform the image into an identical dramatic announcement of the Incarnation. This work gives great expression to his play between realism and abstraction.
Gerhard Richter has been a key player in setting the formal and ideological agenda for painting in contemporary art. His canvases, instantly recognizable, literally and figuratively browse the lines of representation and abstraction. Richter's color palette of powerful hues is all substance and "no style," in the artist's own words. Richter is noted for his use of both photorealist and abstract languages side by side, producing voraciously and developing his own artistic style at short intervals. The significance of Richter's career and body of work is evident in his many solo exhibitions in the world's most revered museums.
Gerhard Richter's editions are attracting growing interest worldwide and from Asian collectors who are being offered a unique insight into the vast artistic oeuvre of this German master and his astonishing diversity of style.
Cover: GERHARD RICHTERFlow, 2016
