Name: Flow (P15)
Brand: Gerhard Richter
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Gerhard Richter's Flow (P15) (2014) is estimated to be worth between £6,500 and £9,500. This unsigned digital print has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 5%. Over the past 12 months, the average selling price was £7,111 across 4 total sales. This work has an auction history of 52 total sales since its entry to the market in March 2017. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 500.

Meaning & Analysis

The work of internationally acclaimed German artist Gerhard Richter, Flow (P15) was issued in 2014. An unsigned print, it was released in an edition of 500 and is part of the artist’s Flow series. A typical example of Richter’s abstract work in the 2014-2016 period, it is made after a large, diptych-like abstract painting that makes use of diluted oil paints and fluid mechanics in order to achieve dazzling abstraction.

Unlike Bagdad (P9) and Bagdad (P10), Flow (P15) is a moody print that recalls paintings of the Christian religious tradition. The print is made after a painting executed by Richter with the use of diluted oil paints; allowed to ‘float’ on top of the surface medium, these oil paints of varying hues interact with one another wholly independent of the human hand. An alchemical work that contrasts with Richter’s squeegee-based paintings, such as Cage (P19-2) - and the fiercely procedural and guided process required to complete them - Flow P15) might be digested as Richter’s attempt to push the boundaries of ‘chance’ - a creative force that he has sought to harness throughout his lengthy and successful career.

Presented in the form of a diptych, the work is dominated by a fiery wave of orange tones that appear to be ‘struck’ by a lighter, more visceral section of white and yellow paint to the left of its composition. Not unlike Byzantine icons nor paintings hung at Christian altarpieces, the print communicates with art historical tradition, particularly religious paintings designed to represent the so-called ‘wrath of Gods’. Its innovative use of oil paints, as well as its composition, gesture to the work of Dutch painter Jan van Eyck, who pioneered oil painting during the 13th century. Recalling the depictions of bad weather found in later oil-based Dutch works, such as The Gloomy Day by Pieter Bruegel (1565), Flow (P15) appears to trace the likeness of a similarly violent force of natural origin.