SEASCAPE (GREEN-GREY, CLOUDY) [SEESTÜCK (GRÜNGRAU, BEWÖLKT)], 1969

No clouds or skies look more alluring than those painted by Gerhard Richter or John Constable. Likewise, no perception of humans in the world can be more distant than the ones created by the works of Caspar David Friedrich and Gerhard Richter. But we shouldn’t insist on comparing them, as has been done in various publications. In his “cloud studies”, Constable wanted his brushstrokes to be made visible. Using brush and scraper, he was able to transfer the textures of the landscape he was looking at to the canvas. In his Seascapes, Richter resorted to a blurring technique, using a squeegee to apply highly diluted paint, to produce a smooth photo-like surface.