Gerhard Richter. Paintings 1963 - 2007

Gerhard Richter is one of the most important artists of our time. His paintings, both figurative and abstract, have had a huge impact on several generations of artists and helped to make painting once again a vital means of artistic expression.

Drawn from a small, select number of private collections, this exhibition provides an unrivalled overview of the artist’s career from 1963 to the present. It includes iconic works of the 1960s based on magazine and newspaper cuttings and personal photographs to his recent abstract canvases.

This section allows you to obtain a feel for the exhibition before visiting. Take your time exploring some of the show’s major themes, and enjoy a preview of nine highlighted works.

Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932 to a middle class family. Like many Germans of his generation, his relatives were involved in the Nazi movement and it is perhaps these experiences which formed his strong dislike of collective beliefs of any kind.

Richter’s mother encouraged him to become an artist during his mid-teens and he studied at the Dresden Art Academy in Communist East Germany.

After fleeing to Düsseldorf with his wife, only a few months before the Berlin Wall was erected, Richter studied at the Staatliche Kuntstakademie Düsseldorf under Karl Otto Götz.

During the early sixties Richter began to work with artists such as Sigmar Polke and Konrad Lueg. Their work, particularly Richter’s, slowly began to have an impact in Germany, and eventually international art circles. Together with Polke and Lueg, Richter formed a group called the Capitalist Realists.

The Capitalist Realists often derived their subject matter from print media. Richter strongly believed that paintings should represent real life rather than promote ideas and he wanted to find a new way of painting that would not be constricting. Richter has always possessed a strong dislike for ideology.

He focuses on the ordinary, regardless of what the subject is. Throughout his career Richter has tended to avoid giving psychological insight into his art, leaving everyone guessing.

Richter emerged from the Capital Realists to become one of the most sought after contemporary artists in the world.

Richter’s 2001 Retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art displayed how diverse his work is. He has explored every genre of painting imaginable: figurative photo-paintings, abstract works, townscapes, colour streaks, shadow paintings, landscapes and seascapes.

Many of his earlier works were blurred figurative paintings, both with and without colour. His later work is dominated by abstract painting, with a colour palette that is either brilliant or subdued. Richter has produced many photo-paintings, made using a multi-step process of representations. He starts with a photograph and projects it onto canvas, where he traces its form. Taking his colour palette from the photograph, he paints to replicate the look of the original picture.

Richter’s hallmark blur is a result of this process; it is the blurring of the boundary between photographic representation and painterly art. Richter has an air of unpredictability about him – producing abstract works when people expected him to produce photo-realist ones and minimalist ones when people were adjusting to the vibrant colours of his Abstract Paintings.

venues

19.01.08 - 04.05.08 Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden
09.05.08 - 02.07.08 National Art Museum of China, Peking
01.11.08 - 04.01.09 National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
24.01.09 - 03.05.09 Albertina, Wien
16.05.09 - 16.08.09 Museum Küppersmühle, Duisburg