The Luma Foundation presents Strip Tower (962), 2023, a large-scale outdoor sculpture by Gerhard Richter at Lake Silvaplana in Sils Maria, Engadin. On view from January 2026 for an initial period of three years, the work is part of the Luma Foundation’s ongoing project, Elevation 1049, extending the initiative into the Alpine landscape.
Based on Richter’s Strip Paintings (from 2010), Strip Tower (962) translates his exploration of painting, photography, digital processes, and abstraction into three dimensions. Eight interlocking panels clad in brightly striped ceramic tiles rise over five metres, forming a cross-shaped interior that visitors can enter. Immersed in shifting fields of colour and light, they encounter a work that engages perception and materiality while entering into dialogue with the Alpine landscape of Sils Maria, a place Richter has visited regularly since 1989.
Now on view in Sils Maria, Engadin, Gerhard Richter’s Strip Tower (962) marks a rare moment where painting, sculpture, and landscape converge. Presented by the Luma Foundation as part of Elevation 1049, the monumental work will remain on view at Lake Silvaplana until Spring 2029, inviting visitors into a slow, immersive encounter with colour, perception, and time.
Installed against the crystalline backdrop of the Alps, Strip Tower translates Richter’s rigorous abstract language into architectural form. Rising over five metres, the sculpture stands as a quiet yet resolute presence—less a landmark than an experience to be entered.
Strip Tower is a three-dimensional extension of Gerhard Richter Strip Paintings, a body of work the artist began developing in 2010 through digital manipulation and systematic repetition. In the sculpture, eight interlocking vertical panels clad in vividly striped ceramic tiles form a cross-shaped interior that visitors can step inside. Colour shifts with movement, light, and weather, transforming abstraction into a spatial, bodily experience.
True to Richter’s long-standing tension between chance and control, the work gives structure to unpredictability. The stripes resist narrative and symbolism, instead foregrounding rhythm, optical vibration, and duration—qualities that echo throughout his painted practice.
Presented as part of Elevation 1049, the Luma Foundation’s ongoing initiative dedicated to site-responsive works in Alpine contexts, Strip Tower engages directly with its environment without overpowering it. Installed at Lake Silvaplana, the sculpture responds to changing light and climate, establishing a dialogue between contemporary abstraction and the elemental clarity of the Engadin landscape.
Gerhard Richter
Strip Tower (962), 2023, Sils Maria, Switzerland, 2026
Photography courtesy of Parkhotel Margna and Luzi Seiler © Gerhard Richter
