Fuji 2 1996

Gerhard Richter created ‘Fuji 2’, like much of his work, with oil on canvas, though the effect is far from traditional. The colours are vibrant, yet veiled, applied in horizontal streaks that suggest movement and blur the boundaries between hues. Looking closely, you can see how Richter manipulates the paint, dragging it across the surface to create a layered effect. There's a real sense of physicality, like he's wrestling with the medium. Notice that central mass of white, seemingly solid, yet broken up by those fleeting marks of red and green, as if it’s dissolving before your eyes. It's almost like a landscape viewed through rain-streaked glass. Richter’s abstract paintings, including this one, remind me a little of the late work of Turner, with their atmospheric washes of colour and light. But where Turner sought to capture the sublime beauty of nature, Richter seems more interested in the act of painting itself, in the way that colour and form can evoke emotions and ideas without ever fully resolving into a clear image. It’s this ambiguity, this openness to interpretation, that makes his work so compelling.