‘Abstraktes Bild’ from 1992 shows the full ambition of Richter’s abstract practice. See it in our galleries on New Bond Street ahead of The London Sales. ‘Abstraktes Bild’ was first shown at the landmark ‘Documenta IX’ in Kassel in 1992. It was later selected for two celebrated retrospectives: ‘Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting,’ at The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 and the 2025-26 exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Richter built his practice on repetition and improvisation, using a squeegee as his primary tool. He dragged and scraped oil paint across the canvas, concealing and revealing layers to give each work an element of unpredictability. In ‘Abstraktes Bild,’ this balance between control and chance leads to a dense surface. The palette moves between deep blue and cooler areas of teal, interrupted by long vertical bands of silvered pink and rose. It produces an atmospheric effect that recalls a Monet waterlily, or...