Abstraktes Bild (1986)

A painter from both Germanys

Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden on February 9, 1932, and grew up in the Upper Lusatian countryside, where his father was a village teacher. He apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, was turned down by the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1950 as "too bourgeois," and was admitted in 1951. From 1957 to 1961 he worked as a master trainee at the academy, painting murals and taking commissions for the East German state.

In 1961, two months before the Berlin Wall went up, he and his wife Marianne escaped to West Germany. His Dresden murals were painted over. In the West he studied at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf under Karl Otto Gotz alongside Sigmar Polke, with whom he coined "Capitalist Realism" as an anti-style. He returned to the Dusseldorf academy as a professor in 1971 and taught there for more than 15 years, and in 1983 he moved to Cologne, where he still lives and works.

Richter has painted photorealist images, landscapes, candles and skulls, and the 1988 cycle about the Red Army Faction, 18 October 1977. But it is the abstractions that have driven his market. Asked about prices like these, he has said, "It's just as absurd as the banking crisis."

1986: the squeegee takes over

Richter first titled a work Abstract Painting in 1976. From the mid-1980s he began using a homemade squeegee to scrape and drag paint he had laid down in broad bands across the canvas. The 2015 auction catalog describes this painting as a decisive break: after the more planned abstractions of 1980 to 1985, from 1986 Richter gave up set compositions in favor of the unpredictable scrape and build-up of the squeegee.

The picture is made in layers. A pearly underpainting shows most in the lower half. Horizontal veils of stuttering paint, pulled by the squeegee, cut across vertical strokes of a wide brush, with finer angular accents on top. The colors run from deep blue to acid yellow and red, and a vertical band of green runs through the center, crossed by a stream of brighter color. Richter added the title, the year and the catalog number 599 on the back.

The filmmaker Corinna Belz, who filmed Richter making an abstract painting with a plexiglass squeegee in 2012, described the method this way: "It's a process of building up a situation and then destroying it. It's also a very emotional thing."

From Cologne to New York to London

The painting went directly from the artist to the Michael and Eleonore Stoffel Foundation in Cologne. In 1986 and 1987 it traveled in Positionen: Malerei aus der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, a survey of West German painting shown in East Berlin, at the Albertinum in Dresden, the city Richter had fled, and at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. It appears as number 599 in the third volume of Richter's catalogue raisonne, published in 1993.

During the 1990s, at Richter's personal request, it hung on extended loan at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, and it was reproduced in the museum's 1996 collection catalog. On May 18, 1999, it was sold at auction in New York for $607,500 (one account gives $607,000) and went into private hands; the provenance lists one more owner before the 2015 sale. In the meantime it turned up in print, including on the front cover of a 2005 book on postmodern American fiction.

On February 10, 2015, it was lot 37 in an evening sale of contemporary art in London, estimated at £14 million to £20 million. An anonymous buyer from the United States paid £30,389,000, reported as $46.3 million. One encyclopedia account converts the price as $44.52 million; the higher figure is the one given by the auction house and by art-market data.

How to know it

Richter painted many works with the same title, so the number is what identifies this one: Abstraktes Bild, 1986, catalogue raisonne number 599, signed, dated and numbered on the reverse. At just over 300 cm tall it is one of the largest abstract paintings he made; the 2015 catalog called it one of his largest and "certainly one of his most chromatically astounding."

The 2015 condition report found it in very good condition, with a few short hairline cracks in the paint along the edges and no restoration visible under ultraviolet light. The catalog also noted that the colors in person are brighter and more vibrant than the printed illustration.

The painting is listed in both editions of Richter's catalogue raisonne: Angelika Thill and others, volume III (1993), and Dietmar Elger, volume III (2013), page 507, each as number 599.

The top of the Richter market

The 2015 price set a new record for a work by a living European artist. At that point it was the second-highest price ever paid at auction for a work by any living artist, behind Jeff Koons's Balloon Dog (Orange). It beat Richter's previous record, the $37.1 million paid in May 2013 for his 1968 painting Cathedral Square, Milan.

The climb to that record ran through the abstractions. In November 2011 Abstraktes Bild 849-3 set a Richter record at $20.8 million, and the collector who bought it gave it to the Israel Museum. In late 2012 Eric Clapton sold Abstraktes Bild (809-4), a 1994 canvas, for $34.2 million. Between its 1999 and 2015 sales, this painting's price rose from $607,500 to more than $46 million.

As of an art-market report published in October 2025, the 2015 result remained Richter's highest price at auction.

The numbers

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

300.5 x 250.5 cm (118 3/8 x 98 5/8 in.)

Catalogue raisonne

No. 599 (Thill et al., 1993, Vol. III; Elger, 2013, Vol. III, p. 507)

Inscription

Signed, dated 1986 and numbered 599 on the reverse

Current owner

Private; an anonymous U.S. buyer in 2015

Timeline

1. Feb 9, 1932

   Gerhard Richter is born in Dresden.

2. 1950

   The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts rejects his application as "too bourgeois"; he is admitted in 1951.

3. 1961

   Richter escapes to West Germany two months before the Berlin Wall is built.

4. 1971

   Returns to the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf as a professor.

5. 1976

   First gives a work the title Abstract Painting.

6. 1983

   Moves from Dusseldorf to Cologne.

7. 1986

   Paints Abstraktes Bild, numbered 599; it goes directly to the Michael and Eleonore Stoffel Foundation in Cologne.

8. 1986

   Shown in Positionen, a survey of West German painting, in East Berlin, Dresden and Hanover (1986-87).

9. 1993

   Catalogued as no. 599 in volume III of the Richter catalogue raisonne.

10. 1996

    Reproduced in the Museum Ludwig's collection catalog while on extended loan there at the artist's request.

11. May 18, 1999

    Sold at auction in New York for $607,500.

12. 2005

    Reproduced on the front cover of a book on postmodern American fiction.

13. 2013

    Catalogued as no. 599 in Dietmar Elger's catalogue raisonne, volume III.

14. May 2013

    Richter's Cathedral Square, Milan sets his auction record at $37.1 million.

15. Feb 10, 2015

    Sold at auction in London for £30,389,000 ($46.3 million) to an anonymous U.S. buyer, a record for a living European artist.

16. Oct 2025

    An art-market report notes the 2015 result still stands as Richter's auction record.

The world in 1986

• Jan 28, 1986

  The Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew, including teacher Christa McAuliffe.

• Feb 3, 1986

  Pixar is founded, with John Lasseter and Steve Jobs.

• Feb 9, 1986

  Halley's Comet reaches perihelion on its second visit of the 20th century.

• Feb 28, 1986

  Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme is shot dead in Stockholm on his way home from the cinema.

• Apr 26, 1986

  A failed safety test at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union causes the Chernobyl disaster, spreading radioactive fallout.

• Jun 22, 1986

  Diego Maradona scores the "Hand of God" goal and a solo goal against England at the World Cup in Mexico.

• Jul 4, 1986

  The Statue of Liberty reopens after its centennial restoration.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Abstraktes Bild (1986) is number 14 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (14 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Richter himself asked that the painting be lent to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, where it hung through the 1990s.
• In 1986 and 1987 it was shown in Dresden, the city of Richter's birth, which he had fled 25 years earlier.
• Its price rose from $607,500 in 1999 to £30.4 million in 2015.
• The Dresden art academy first turned Richter down in 1950 for being "too bourgeois."
• It appears on the front cover of a 2005 academic book about postmodern American fiction.