A large-scale and colorful outdoor sculpture by Gerhard Richter is presented by the Luma Foundation, at Lake Silvaplana in Sils Maria, in the Engadin region of Switzerland. STRIP TOWER (962) (2023) is installed as a long-term public sculpture for an initial period of three years. Presented as part of Elevation 1049, the project extends the initiative’s reach into one of the country’s most historically resonant Alpine landscapes. Before its Engadin presentation, it was shown in Kensington Gardens in London, as part of Serpentine’s dynamic public art programme.

The spectacular sculpture translates Richter’s long-running engagement with painting, photography and digital processes into three dimensions. It develops from the artist’s Strip Paintings series, begun in 2010 and derived from the earlier work Abstract Painting 724-4 (1990). In these works, photographic reproductions of a painting are digitally manipulated and divided into increasingly narrow vertical bands, which are then stretched horizontally and realised on aluminium beneath Perspex.

For the sculptural version, eight vertical panels clad in brightly striped ceramic tiles rise more than five metres and interlock to form a dense, layered structure. Their configuration creates a cross-shaped interior space that visitors can enter, producing shifting visual fields of colour and light. Installed in the open landscape, the work brings Richter’s abstract vocabulary into dialogue with the surrounding Alpine environment, a region the artist has visited regularly since the late 1980s.

Since its launch in 2014, Elevation 1049, conceived and produced by the Luma Foundation, has commissioned site-specific projects across the Swiss Alps. Initially developed in Gstaad and the Saanenland, and later expanded to St. Moritz, the initiative places contemporary art within the region’s landscapes, inviting artists to respond to the Alps’ environmental, historical and cultural contexts. Stunning!

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Image: Gerhard Richter, STRIP TOWER (962), 2023. Sils Maria, Switzerland, 2026. Courtesy of Gerhard Richter Kunststiftung and Luma Foundation. Photo: Schaub Stierli Fotografie.