Life-sized portraits of lap-sized, wide-eyed poodles aren’t the only thing Sotheby’s is selling tomorrow. It’s also selling one of Gerhard Richter’s greatest paintings, 4096 Farben, CR-359, (1974). The 64×64 grid of 1024 different colors, each painted somewhere four times, is sort of a capstone of Richter’s color chart project. At least until the Köln cathedral windows, of course. And those are not for sale.
I wasn’t going to post this before I saw the drop-shadow in the image above. Because unlike most of the illustrations in the catalogue for 4900 Colours, it is actually a photograph of a painting.
Lot 115: Gerhard Richter, 4096 Farben, est. $18-25m [update: gekauft for $21.8m] [sothebys]