Gerhard Richter: Abstraction
In this exhibition the Museum Barberini explored the abstract strategies and techniques in the work of Gerhard Richter—from the early 1960s to new works that were presented here for the first time.
The work of Gerhard Richter has been celebrated in a string of major retrospectives, including a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2002. In 2011, theTate Modern in London, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris mounted an exhibition that took a broad look at Richter’s entire oeuvre, entitled Panorama. Similar to these exhibitions, Gerhard Richter: Abstraction also traced a broad arc from the 1960s to the artist’s recent works. The exhibition at the Museum Barberini concentrated for the first time upon a central theme in Richter’s painting: the abstract strategies and techniques employed in the artist’s oeuvre.
Helge Mundt
“Abstraction runs like a golden thread through Richter’s painting. By integrating chance in a calculated way, Richter revokes the conscious control of the painting process. He avoids creative pathos and meanings that lie outside of art, and the pictures come across on their own.”
The exhibition was inspired by A B, Still (1986), a work in the Hasso Plattner Collection, and brought together over ninety artworks from museums and private collections in Germany and abroad, some of which were shown for the first time. It followed Richter’s development from the black-and-white Photo paintings and Color Charts to the Detail paintings, the Gray paintings, the Inpaintings, and the Abstract pictures, as Richter often titled his works from the late 1970s onward. The works in this last series retain traces of the tools used in the artist’s working process: brushes, squeegees, and spatulas.
Through the broad range of the diverse groups of works on display, viewers were able to identify elements that recur throughout Richter’s oeuvre. The exhibition, curated by Ortrud Westheider, Director of the Museum Barberini, and Dietmar Elger, Director of the Gerhard Richter Archive at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, was developed in close collaboration with the artist and the Gerhard Richter Archive.
Retrospect
Over 150,000 visitors attended the exhibition during its three and a half month run. An extensive program of events and educational activities with lectures, tours, concerts, and films accompanied the show. Film director Corinna Belz presented portions of her famous documentary on Richter on the media wall.
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