Gerhard Richter Boeken

Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) is one of the most highly regarded of contemporary artists, and his series of 15 paintings known as October 18, 1977, is one of the 20th century's most famous works on a political theme. It commemorates the day on which three young German radicals, members of the militant Baader-Meinhof group, were found dead in a Stuttgart prison; they were pronounced suicides, but many people suspected that they had been murdered. Richter's paintings, created 11 years after this traumatic event, are among the most challenging works of the artist's career.These hauntingly powerful images, derived from newspaper and police photography, are now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and will be on view beginning in September 2000 as part of the MoMA2000 series of exhibitions. In this book, Robert Storr provides necessary political background to the series, but his approach is art historical, offering insight into the complexities of "history painting" in the modern era.

Gerhard Richter is widely seen as one of the most important painters at work in the world today. Born in Dresden, Germany, in 1932, he left for the West in 1961, settling in Dusseldorf, where he held his first exhibition in 1963. He has exhibited internationally for the last five decades, including retrospectives in New York, Paris and Dusseldorf. He lives and works in Cologne. As the artist draws near to his eightieth birthday in 2012, Tate Modern in collaboration with the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, is staging a major retrospective exhibition. Exhibition: Tate Modern, London 6 October 2011 - 8 January 2012 / Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin February - April 2012 / Centre Pompidou, Paris 6 June - 24 September 2012

"An exploration of the idea of the world in art (both an image of the world that has perished, and another opened up by the artwork) as revealed through a number of seminal philosophical thinkers as well as through assorted modes of aesthetic production, including painting, film, photography, poetry and music"-- Provided by publisher

This text presents the work, done between November 1999 and March 2000, of Gerard Richter. He produced 100 overpainted photographs which predominantly use shots taken by Richter himself in Florence.

The exhibition showcases the diverse facets of Richter's oeuvre, featuring iconic portraits of his daughters Betty and Ella, paintings reflecting everyday life and historical issues, mountain and seascapes, monochrome grey works, expressive abstracts, computer-processed geometric Strips, and his renowned Colour Charts, which inspired the monumental stained-glass windows for Cologne's Gothic Cathedral. Notably, the Uncle Rudi painting, depicting Richter's uncle as a Nazi soldier, is on loan from the Lidice Collection, where it was donated half a century ago. Additionally, sheets from his legendary Atlas, a compilation of photographs, newspaper clippings, and drawings collected since the 1960s, are displayed. The exhibition emphasizes Richter's exploration of history—not just Germany's history but also that of his family and the art world. This theme connects his personal photo-realistic works with those addressing broader art history, aiming to convey meanings beyond words. Organized chronologically, the exhibition highlights the evolving themes Richter has embraced, reflecting his engagement with contemporary trends and his constant quest for new artistic expression.

Ranging from photo-based pictures to gestural abstraction, Gerhard Richter's diverse body of work calls into question many widely-held attitudes about the importance of stylistic consistency and the relationship of technological means and mass media imagery to traditional studio methods and formats. Unlike many of his peers, he has explored these issues through the medium of painting, challenging it to meet the demands posed by new forms of conceptual art. In every level of his varied output--from his austere photo-based realism of the early 60s, to his brightly colored gestural abstractions of the early 80s, to his notorious cycle of black-and-white paintings of the Baader-Meinhof group--Richter has assumed a critical distance from vanguardists and conservatives alike regarding what painting "should" be. The result has been one of the most convincing renewals of painting's vitality to be found in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century art. With an extensive and insightful critical essay by curator Robert Storr, a recent interview with the artist, a chronology, an exhibition history and nearly 300 color and duotone reproductions, Gerhard Forty Years of Painting marks a significant contribution to the understanding of contemporary art in general, and Gerhard Richter in particular.

Born in Dresden in 1931, Gerhard Richter left the former GDR in 1961 to study in Düsseldorf, later living and working in Cologne. His practice has redefined the medium of painting, combining a rigorous conceptual approach with a sumptuous yet elusive beauty. His mastery of genres spans landscapes, portraiture, still life and abstraction. Lying at the heart of his practice is an ongoing project that commenced in 1964 and continues to this day. Atlas comprises over five thousand photographs, drawings, diagrams and proposals that are the foundation of Richter's oeuvre. Sometimes used as a source for his painting, Richter's album of pictures also demonstrates the complex dialogues he explores between painting and photography, history and memory, perception and representation. This book provides a critical tool for navigating Atlas, bringing together Richter's own writings alongside commentaries by an international range of curators, critics and art historians.

Focusing on the act of drawing itself, this artist's book showcases twenty-six unique drawings by Gerhard Richter, characterized by their individuality and distinctive techniques. Richter employs a variety of forms, including meandering lines and tonal planes, blending choice and chance in a generative process. The works on paper reflect the fundamental principles of his artistic journey, inviting deep observation and inspiring new interpretations of abstraction. Each drawing is reproduced at actual size, enhancing the viewer's experience.

In a series of evocatively titled theses, including 'Wrinkles', 'Inheriting a Feeling', 'Weight of the World' and 'Making Treasures Speak', Gerhard Richter engages the quintessentially human dilemma of how to receive an intellectual, cultural or political inheritance. In dialogue with philosophers including Heraclitus, Arendt and Derrida; writers such as Montaigne, H�lderlin, Kafka and Knausgaard; artists such as Michelangelo, Picasso, Anselm Kiefer and Art Spiegelman; filmmakers such as Jean-Marie Straub; scholars and scientists Freud and Einstein; and pop-cultural phenomena the rock band The Who and the Broadway play The Inheritance, Richter contemplates the problem of interpreting an inheritance that resists full transparency. Richter argues that inheriting is not the same as yearning for a former presence or nostalgically striving to preserve an identity. At once philosophical and poetic, his aphoristic theses illuminate how the constantly shifting nature of our relationship to what we inherit from others makes us who we are.