Flow (P6)
Flow (P6)
Unsigned Print
Gerhard Richter
£2,600-£3,850 VALUE (EST.)
$4,800-$7,000 VALUE (EST.)
$4,350-$6,500 VALUE (EST.)
¥22,000-¥35,000 VALUE (EST.)
€2,950-€4,400 VALUE (EST.)
$25,000-$35,000 VALUE (EST.)
¥420,000-¥620,000 VALUE (EST.)
$3,200-$4,750 VALUE (EST.)
This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
Digital Print, 2014
Unsigned Print Edition of 500
H 45cm x W 45cm
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Artwork | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 2020 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | Flow (P6) - Unsigned Print | |||
| March 2020 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | Flow (P6) - Unsigned Print | |||
| March 2019 | Christie's London - United Kingdom | Flow (P6) - Unsigned Print | |||
| June 2018 | Sotheby's Milan - Italy | Flow (P6) - Unsigned Print | |||
| September 2017 | Sotheby's London - United Kingdom | Flow (P6) - Unsigned Print | |||
| June 2016 | Wright - United States | Flow (P6) - Unsigned Print | |||
| April 2016 | Christie's London - United Kingdom | Flow (P6) - Unsigned Print |
Meaning & Analysis
Flow (P6) is the work of German artist Gerhard Richter. An unsigned print, it was issued in an edition of 500 in 2014 and belongs to the Flow series.
Another particularly successful work of Richter’s, Flow (P6) references the artist’s experimentations with diluted oil paints during the 2010s. Altogether different in its relationship to abstraction and non-representation than other works in the Cage Prints, Cage f.ff and Cage Grid series, this print is saturated with a strong sense of movement, and indeed of the relative absence of any trace of its creator. We are used to seeing Richter’s abstract artworks as highly-complex paintings product of hours of deliberation, and an accretive painterly process that sees the artist add and subtract layers of paint with large, home-made ‘squeegees’. In this work, as in the rest of the Flow series, paint and colour moves independently, interacting with itself to leave a visual trace of fluid mechanics.
Destructive in the sense that it works to undo traditional methods of painting, this artwork can be seen as a direct relative of Richter’s many photorealist paintings, such as the world famous Betty. In these works, the rigid borders of form are elided by way of a ‘blurring’ technique. Commenting on his reasoning behind the blur technique, Richter once confessed: “I blur things so that they do not look artistic or craftsmanlike but technological, smooth and perfect. I blur things to make all the parts a closer fit. Perhaps I also blur out the excess of unimportant information.”
