Expert Voices: Oliver Barker on Gerhard Richter’s 4096 Farben

One after the other, each pigment glimmers from the monumental lacquer surface of 4096 Farben as Gerhard Richter deftly refines painting to its simplest and yet most evocative form: color. Executed in 1974, 4096 Farben emerges as the singular milestone and ultimate destination of Richter’s pivotal Color Chart paintings, which stand among the most significant conceptual breakthroughs in not only the artist’s legendary career, but also the tradition of painting within the last century. In this final painting of the series, Richter multiplies each color within his palette fourfold, resulting in the most amount of quadrants he ever arranged in a Color Chart painting at this point and arriving at the moment of visual entropy situated at the threshold between image and abstraction.

4096 Farben from Gerhard Richter will be offered in Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening auction on 18 May at Sotheby’s New York as a part of the New York Sales.