The 91-year-old Richter is one of the most expensive, influential living artists. “4096 Colors” comes from a private collection.
A major work by Gerhard Richter, the 1974 painting ‘4096 Colors’ will be auctioned in New York on May 18. The estimated price is 18 to 25 million dollars, the equivalent of 16.5 to 23 million euros, said the German headquarters of the auction house Sotheby’s in Richter’s place of residence in Cologne. “This last painting in the coveted color plate series was also the inspiration for the artist’s magnificent window in Cologne Cathedral,” said a spokeswoman. The picture comes from a private collection.
The 91-year-old Richter is one of the most expensive and influential living artists in the world. “4096 Colors” was exhibited in places like Chicago, San Francisco, London’s Tate Modern and the Berlin State Museums. Richter came up with the idea of the color charts when he was looking at color sample cards in a Düsseldorf paint shop. It occurred to him that these were actually perfect pictures. So he simply copied the color plates, but he always coordinated the different color fields differently.
Between 1966 and 1974 he painted three different series of such panels, each increasing in complexity and colourfulness. They are attributed to Pop Art, which is inspired by everyday life in capitalist consumer society. In October, the Richter work “192 Colors” was auctioned at Sotheby’s in London for the equivalent of 20.9 million euros.
(APA/dpa)
