Lot 812 Dα

„Since 1995, he [Richter] had evolved an abstract pictorial idiom: labyrinths in which the eye could lose itself, as if in a thicket. There was a highly differentiated interplay of values, in which formal design was relativized by seemingly mindless decoration or unconscious defacement; in which the rivalry among forms and among gestures threw the painting off centre, and every possibility of a compositional focus was constantly deferred. However, the longer Richter went on practising this kind of painting, the more it settled into an elegant equilibrium in which even the most aggressive anti-painting was subsumed into an ingeniously contrived pictorial whole. Because the interplay between creation and destruction of form had ceased to work, Richter now needed more powerful explosive charges to disrupt his pictorial structure: babies' heads, cobwebs, skulls - metaphors for the 'great' themes of painting: Youth, Transience and Death.” (Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, Richters Wende, in: Contemporary Fine Arts (ed.), Daniel Richter, Die Frau, Rock'n'roll - nein danke, exhib.cat. Berlin 2000, not paginated)