Since 1960, Gerhard Richter has been painting not only photographic images, but increasingly also abstract pictures, large-format compositions in which manifold possibilities of non-representational painting are brought to light. The title of some of these paintings point back to the objective world, including the small group of Wall paintings (1984, 1994, and 1998).

Dominated by powerful red tones, the canvas from 1994 actually confronts the viewer like a wall. Uniformly placed vertical lines in the partially torn open layers of paint are reminiscent of densely placed shuttering boards that allow only a few glimpses into the depth of the pictorial space. Five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the title of the painting also evokes associations with the years that moved the Federal Republic.

This outstanding painting was donated by Viktoria von Flemming to the Freunde der Kunstsammlung in 2019, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Freunde.