Cage (P19-5)
Cage (P19-5)
Unsigned Print
Gerhard Richter
100 x 100cm, Edition of 200, Giclée print, 2020
£11,000-£16,000
$21,000-$30,000 Market Value Indicator
$21,000-$30,000 Market Value Indicator
¥100,000-¥140,000 Market Value Indicator
€13,000-€19,000 Market Value Indicator
$120,000-$170,000 Market Value Indicator
¥2,310,000-¥3,360,000 Market Value Indicator
$14,500-$21,000 Market Value Indicator
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Meaning & Analysis
Cage (P19-5) is a 2020 giclée print by Gerhard Richter, one of six works comprising the Cage Prints series (P19-1 through P19-6). Derived from the artist's 2006 Cage paintings – first exhibited at the 2007 Venice Biennale – the print presents a densely layered abstract composition: cool greys dragged and smeared across the surface, with pale yellow and cream tones breaking through from beneath. Produced in an unsigned edition of 200.
The Cage paintings, from which this print series derives, mark one of the high points of Richter's late abstract practice. Made in 2006 and named after the American composer John Cage – whose experimental music, built on chance operations and the deliberate loosening of authorial control, offered Richter a philosophical parallel for his own process – the six canvases were produced by dragging paint across the surface with a wide squeegee blade, building dense, layered compositions in which each gesture simultaneously applies and removes colour.
P19-5 is dominated by cool, layered greys – the characteristic palette of this particular canvas within the series. Pale yellow and cream tones are visible where earlier paint layers have been partially exposed by the squeegee's movement across the surface, creating areas of warmth within an otherwise cool and compressed composition. Traces of other colour – red, blue, a flash of green – appear in the upper register, partially obscured by subsequent overpainting. The horizontal and vertical directionality of the marks is legible throughout, giving the work a structural organisation that counterpoints its apparent spontaneity.
The Cage Prints are among the most significant editions of Richter's later career, reproducing a body of painting that remains central to ongoing debates about abstraction, intention, and what a painted surface can carry.
