By the mid 2010s, Gerhard Richter had long established a practice that moved fluidly between photography and abstraction. 20. Nov. 14, 2014, is part of the artist’s ongoing series of overpainted photographs, in which small scale photographic prints are partially obscured or transformed through the application of oil paint.

This work illustrates Richter’s rigorous exploration of materiality and chance. The original photographic image, possibly a landscape or interior, acts as a compositional base, while the gestural streaks of paint intervene on the surface, both concealing and revealing. In 20. Nov. 14, thick white and green impasto cuts across the image, disrupting its clarity and redirecting attention to the physical properties of the medium. The result is a tension between indexical documentation and expressive abstraction.

Dating each work by the day of its completion, Richter emphasises temporality and process. Like others in the series, this piece speaks to the artist’s enduring interest in perception, memory and the instability of representation. Neither fully photograph nor painting, it reflects Richter’s resistance to categorisation and his persistent questioning of how images carry meaning.