Schwarz Rot Gold III
Schwarz Rot Gold III
Signed Mixed Media
Gerhard Richter
39 x 39cm, Edition of 10, Mixed Media, 1999
£17,000-£26,000
$30,000-$50,000 Market Value Indicator
$30,000-$50,000 Market Value Indicator
¥150,000-¥240,000 Market Value Indicator
€20,000-€30,000 Market Value Indicator
$180,000-$270,000 Market Value Indicator
¥3,550,000-¥5,430,000 Market Value Indicator
$23,000-$35,000 Market Value Indicator
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Meaning & Analysis
Schwarz Rot Gold III is a Mixed Media work by Gerhard Richter, produced in 1999 and signed in an edition of ten. Part of the Black Red Gold series, the work presents the three vertical bands of the German national flag – black, red, and a warm, muted gold – in a near-square format on a single flat surface. The edition of ten places it among the rarest works in Richter's edition output.
Where Schwarz Rot Gold II presents the flag's colours on separate glass panels with visible hardware, Schwarz Rot Gold III realises the same composition on a unified flat surface – the transitions between black, red, and gold sharper, the format more concentrated, the overall effect more austere. The gold here is warmer and more muted, approaching ochre rather than the bright yellow of its predecessor, which subtly shifts the register: less the flag as emblematic spectacle, more the flag as deliberate and considered object.
The edition of ten signals a significant departure in scale. At ten impressions, the work approaches the intimacy of a unique piece; the variation inherent to any mixed media process means that no two are precisely identical. Richter's engagement with the German tricolour is at once critical and biographical. Born in the German Democratic Republic and a witness to reunification in 1990, he brings to the flag a relationship that refuses both celebration and simple critique. The Black Red Gold works allow the symbol to hold its full historical complexity without resolution – for Richter, both a formal strategy and the most honest response available.
