Sketch for Labyrinth - no. 301 1970

Hans Richter made this watercolor sketch, with its washy blue ground and brown lines, at an unknown date. I imagine the water moving on the page, pushing the pigment around, and Richter making decisions as he goes. Those brown lines! What do they want? The painting feels architectural to me, like the bare bones of a house or maybe even a whole city. It reminds me of some of the geometric abstract drawings that Mondrian was doing – but looser, more intuitive, and less dogmatic. It feels unfinished, like an idea that is still coming into being. That’s what’s so cool about painting: the artist is in conversation with the work and in conversation with the history of art. It’s an ongoing process where things emerge out of a haze of not knowing. This is the labyrinth of art, and it's pretty great.