Gerhard Richter’s “4096 Colors” auctioned in New York for $21.8 million EU targets tax evasion and money laundering with Bitcoin and Co

The painting “4096 Colors” by the German painter Gerhard Richter has changed hands in New York for $ 21.8 million. Auction house Sotheby’s announced this on Friday at the traditional spring auctions on its website.

The last painting in the coveted 1974 color plate series also inspired the artist’s magnificent window display in Cologne Cathedral, a spokeswoman for the auction said. in the world. world.

Richter came up with the idea of ​​the color cards when he was looking at color sample cards in a paint shop in Düsseldorf. It occurred to him that these were actually perfect pictures. So he just copied the coloring pages, but he always coordinated the different color areas differently. Between 1966 and 1974 he painted three different series of such panels, each increasing in complexity and colourfulness.

In October, the Richter work “192 Colors” was auctioned at Sotheby’s in London for the equivalent of 20.9 million euros. “4096 Colors” has been exhibited in Chicago, San Francisco, London’s Tate Modern, and the Berlin State Museums, among others.

All in all, Sotheby’s – just like big rival houses like Christie’s – is putting hundreds of works by great artists under the hammer in May. According to the auction house, a spider statue made in 1996 and about three meters high by the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) sold for a “record-breaking” $ 32.8 million (about 30.3 million euros). (aeg/sda/dpa)