Gerhard Richter
AB Mediation
Gerhard Richter
Born in Dresden in 1932
AB Mediation
1986
Oil on canvas
320 x 400 cm
Purchase, Horsley and Annie Townsend Bequest and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Volunteer Association Fund, inv. 1987.8
International Contemporary Art
This painting belongs to the group of “Free Abstracts” that the artist worked on in the mid-1980s. An apparent offshoot of the gestural abstraction Gerhard Richter had admired during his years of academic training, this magnificent diptych is in fact the result of the artist’s analytical approach. Its violent explosion of colours is attenuated by the mechanical application of paint, while certain methodically brushed-on areas of the surface suggest the effects of a landscape viewed through an out-of-focus camera lens – a sign of the preponderance of photography in the artist’s work.
