In the November, December and January canvases Richter reached transcendence. The huge, densely painted abstracts with their black and white layers with flashes of red and gold contain depth and fear, vibrate with the metaphysical dread and historical terror, which when merged with his near-perfect technical skills are awash in the death of the black rain of Hiroshima, the white night of the gulag, the sorrows of the drowned and the saved of Auschwitz. In these paintings, Richter finally lost his mind and found his soul. Only in those paintings did Richter touch me in the "empty deep." – Bruce Bauman