Townscape 1968

Gerhard Richter made this oil painting, ‘Townscape’, with an attitude, almost like he was throwing the paint at the canvas. The marks aren't delicate but thick, with an expressive urgency. The texture is what grabs me; you can see the bristles of the brush pulling and pushing the paint, creating ridges and valleys across the surface. The color palette is reduced to shades of gray, which gives the painting a photographic quality, but the texture pulls it back into the realm of the hand-made. Look at the way he’s suggested corrugated iron – it’s more about the rhythm of the brushstrokes than about accurately depicting the thing itself. That back and forth between abstraction and representation is what makes Richter so interesting. It's almost like he's in conversation with someone like Guston, stripping things back to basics to build them up again in his own way. For Richter, painting isn't about answers, but about the endless questions.