(born in Dresden in 1932)
28.7.88, 1988, signed, dated Richter, 28.7.88, oil on paper, 20.5 x 29.5 cm, framed

Photo Certificate:
Hubertus Butin, Berlin, 26.5.2020

“In the painting titled “28.7.88”, the artist applied grey, white and a little red oil paint with a squeegee (narrow rubber blade) to a white cardboard. More precisely, the paint was only partly ‘squeegeed’ (smeared across the surface), and mainly applied by means of a touch-up process, forming a delicate, subtly differentiated network of white ridges.” Hubertus Butin

Provenance:
The Artist
Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich – directly from the artist
Private Collection North Rhine-Westphalia – acquired from the above in 1991

What role does chance play in your painting?
A very important one, and actually it always has. At times this worried me a lot, and I saw being so dependent on chance as a personal shortcoming.

Is this different to the role chance plays for Pollock? Different to surrealistic automatism?
Certainly a different one. It is never blind chance, always planned, but always surprising. And I need it in order to move on, to eradicate my mistakes, to destroy my false thoughts, to bring in something different and disturbing. And often I am amazed at how much better chance is than me.

Interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh 1986