Marian Goodman's Gerhard Richter 'Candle' Painting Sells For $35.1 M.

A Gerhard Richter painting from the estate of Marian Goodman sold at Christie's on Wednesday evening for $35.1 million with fees, landing below the artist's auction record but still underscoring the durability of his market. The work, Kerze (Candle), dated 1982, had been estimated at $35 million to $50 million and was one of eight Richter works offered from Goodman's estate in the auction house's Marian's Richters & 21st Century Evening Sale.

Bidding began at $22 million and advanced in $2 million increments before slowing almost immediately. The sale lasted less than two minutes. Christie's auctioneer Yü-Ge Wang described the painting ahead of the bidding as part of Richter's“greatest series” and called it a“quiet message of hope.” The lot carried a third-party guarantee.

Goodman purchased the work directly from Richter in 1989 and kept it for nearly 40 years. She died in January at age 97. For decades, Goodman was one of the artist's most important champions, representing him until his move to David Zwirner in 2022. The painting itself is spare: a single white candle in a white holder, placed on a studio sill, its flame leaning left as if caught by a draft.

Richter's candle paintings occupy a distinctive place in his practice. Christie's described the series as a bridge between memory and reality, shaped by the artist's experience of World War II and its aftermath. The imagery also draws on the long art-historical tradition of the still life, where a candle can suggest time passing, faith, knowledge, or the fragility of life. Richter has said that what began as an image intended to“look pretty” later acquired a political meaning in the context of the GDR.

The result fell short of Richter's record of $46.3 million, set in 2015 when Abstraktes Bild (599) sold at Sotheby's London. His second-priciest work, Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan), brought $37.1 million in 2013. Even so, the sale of Kerze (Candle) shows how strongly Richter's most iconic images continue to command attention, especially when they emerge from a collection as closely tied to the artist's career as Goodman's estate.

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