Of spectacular proportions, spanning four metres across (260.4cm x 400cm), Gerhard Richter’s ‘Abstraktes Bild’ (1986) is one of the first large-scale paintings from the series created by the artist, boasting a size and chromatic intensity rarely found even within the grand arc of the artist’s monumental masterworks. The critical year of 1986 heralds a decisive break in the artist’s work, and the artist’s first large-scale touring retrospective ‘Gerhard Richter: Paintings 1962-1985’ in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Bern and Vienna. This was the moment Richter took up the squeegee as his decisive and principal compositional tool, relinquishing any planned compositional elements of form and structure in favour of the indeterminate scrape of the squeegee. Following the artist’s earlier explorations into abstraction between 1980-85 (with works characterised by layers of bold and wide brush-marks) the works that followed from 1986 to 1989 represent the absolute apex of Richter’s Abstraktes Bilder. Richter has only ever produced 24 Abstraktes Bild of this magnitude (with a width greater than 380 cm), and half of these reside in museum collections across the globe. This masterpiece from Gerhard Richter’s celebrated cycle of abstract paintings will headline Sotheby’s London Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on 1 March, and will be on view ahead of the sale in the following locations: Florida 14–17 January Four Seasons Hotel at The Surf Club, Surfside, Florida New York 24–27 January Sotheby’s New York, York Avenue Hong Kong 5–7 February Level 3, ManHo Garden JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong London 22 February–1 March Sotheby’s London, New Bond Street #SothebysLondon #SothebysContemporary #GerhardRichter #Richter