Cage P19-1

‘Cage 1’ (P19-1, 2020) is a Giclée print made after the first of Gerhard Richter’s monumental series of ‘Cage Paintings’ (2006). Originally, Richter intended for the canvases of his ‘Cage’ series to be painted after photographs of atomic structures, but unexpectedly initiated a practice of ‘unpainting’ when he became displeased with their current trajectory.

To this effect, Richter used a self-made squeegee to push and pull layers of paint across his canvases in horizontal and vertical bands, creating heavily textured artworks where bands of colour are intermittently disrupted and destroyed. The visual impact of these uniquely textured canvases was further enhanced by the artist’s use of a scraper to pick at the painted surface of his works. Each resulting multi-directional scratches and indentations, as well as the vivid tonal nuances, are perfectly preserved in the Giclée print.

‘Cage 1’, scaled down from its vast original dimensions to one square metre in the present edition, is one of the most colourful works in the series. The artwork image is dominated by an intense hue of lime green, with a wide bottle-green bar making its way across the top of the canvas. On the right-hand side of the work, a white bar runs vertically, interspersed with patches of green, grey, blue and red.