The paintings “Stroke (on Blue)” (1979) and “Stroke (on Red)” were created in 1979–80 as part of an art-in-architecture project at a vocational school in the district of Soest; in their monumental format of 1.90 by 20 meters, they address a central question in Richter’s exploration of painting. A recurring theme throughout his work is his engagement with painting itself—with the question of what it is and how it comes into being.

Gerhard Richter’s entire oeuvre is difficult to divide into clear chronological phases or styles. Time and again, he revisits techniques he has already used and develops them further. Photography, however, remains a constant companion, as is the case here in the two paintings on display, “Stroke (on Blue)” and “Stroke (on Red).”

Since the 1960s, Richter has used photography as a medium and experimented with it. The starting point for the paintings are brushstrokes he executed on cardboard at a scale of 1:20. He photographed these and projected them onto canvases, each five meters long, using color slides. The projected form was then transferred and elaborated upon through painting. In the process, all the gestural and material characteristics of the sketch are preserved. The images, abstract in nature, depict nothing specific, but rather the gesture of painting in the form of a simple brushstroke. As a consequence of the enlargement, the stroke appears as a clear form from a distance, but up close it disintegrates into individual patches of color.