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Kerze - Signed Print by Gerhard Richter 1988 - MyArtBroker

Kerze
Signed Print

Gerhard Richter

£10,000-£15,000Value Indicator

$21,000-$30,000 Value Indicator

$19,000-$28,000 Value Indicator

¥100,000-¥150,000 Value Indicator

€12,000-€18,000 Value Indicator

$110,000-$160,000 Value Indicator

¥1,940,000-¥2,910,000 Value Indicator

$13,500-$20,000 Value Indicator

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90 x 94cm, Edition of 250, Lithograph

Medium: Lithograph

Edition size: 250

Year: 1988

Size: H 90cm x W 94cm

Signed: Yes

Format: Signed Print

Last Auction: September 2024

Value Trend:

3% AAGR

AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.

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Auction Results

Auction Date
Auction House
Location
Return to Seller
Hammer Price
Buyer Paid
September 2024
Galerie Kornfeld
Germany
$17,000
$20,000
$24,000
December 2023
Lempertz, Cologne
Germany
November 2023
Van Ham Fine Art Auctions
Germany
September 2023
Christie's London
United Kingdom
September 2023
Christie's London
United Kingdom
June 2023
Sotheby's Paris
France
June 2023
Ketterer Kunst Hamburg
Germany
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Track auction value trend

The value of Gerhard Richter's Kerze (signed) is estimated to be worth between £10,000 and £15,000. Over the past 12 months, the artwork has sold once at an average selling price of £15,241. In the last five years, the hammer price has varied from £10,358 in December 2023 to £25,214 in June 2023. This lithograph print, created in 1988, has an auction history of 69 total sales since its entry to the market in April 2003. The artwork has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 3%. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 250.

Created with Highcharts 11.4.8Jun 2023Aug 2023Nov 2023Jan 2024Apr 2024Jun 2024Sep 2024$12,000$14,000$16,000$18,000$20,000$22,000$24,000$26,000© MyArtBroker

Meaning & Analysis

A contemporary take on vanitas painting - an artist genre comprising still life artworks which, through symbolism, remind viewers of both their mortality and the inutility of worldly possessions - Kerze is one of Richter’s most well-known works. It depicts a single lit candle, flickering its light onto a nearby wall.  Speaking to Richter’s mastery of traditional, representational artistic techniques, the work’s reference to canonical art history seeks to complicate the artist’s own position within the field of Post-war and Contemporary Art, as well as its conceptual and stylistic development.

Painted around the same time as Richter’s first Abstract paintings, such as Abstraktes Foto (1989) and Abstraktes Bild (P1) (1990), Kerze testifies to Richter’s incessant return to the ‘old’ as a means of bringing about the ‘new’. The piece is the product of Richter’s so-called ‘Atlas’ - an enormous compilation of image-based materials that Richter has used throughout his career as the photographic basis for his representational works. The work also references Richter’s upbringing in Dresden, from which he escaped in 1961, and the allied bombardment of the same city on the 13th of February the 13th 1945. Commenting on his choice of the candle motif, Richter explained: ‘candles had always been an important symbol for the GDR, as a silent protest against the regime... it was a strange feeling to see that a small picture of candles was turning into something completely different, something that I had never intended. Because, as I was painting it, it neither had this unequivocal meaning nor was it intended to be anything like a street picture. It sort of ran away from me and became something over which I no longer had control...When I painted the candles I wasn't thinking of February the 13th but I did experience feelings to do with contemplation, remembering, silence and death.'

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