Gerhard Richter turns 90: The unbelievable

Created: 02/08/2022, 16:40

By: Simone Dattenberger

One of the most expensive artists in the world: Gerhard Richter in his Cologne studio.

©Oliver Berg/dpa

Gerhard Richter is an exceptional artist, a multifaceted artist.

On Wednesday, February 9th, he celebrates his 90th birthday.

Gerhard Richter has been at the top of the charts for many, many years.

But Gerhard Richter also knows what self-doubt is, even what failure is.

The exceptional artist, the diversity artist turns 90 on Wednesday, February 9th.

The rankings for fine arts are not based on monetary values, but on how popular someone is with museums, exhibition organizers, gallery owners and art historians.

And you have to have presented Richter, no matter where in the world, you collect him and are happy about every purchase, every show.

Gerhard Richter ennobles every exhibition

And you have to have presented Richter, no matter where in the world, you collect him and are happy about every purchase, every show.

An exhibition of the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich, which was realized last year in the Pinakothek der Moderne, is still "radiant" on the Internet - even though the megastar had withdrawn from the studio stage!

But art didn't let go of him, especially not in a time of plague.

Wonderfully scrawling, yet gracefully dancing drawings were created, which took the audience into a cheerful freedom.

No great artist came up trumps, no one who has known everything for a long time and mastered his means with virtuosity;

then a seeker took us with him on his journey, asked us to search with him, so to speak.

Gerhard Richter is one of the most expensive artists in the world

It's probably the constant questioning, the constant doubting that makes Richter's greatness and acceptance among people.

With his heterogeneous oeuvre, hardly anyone would think that he didn't know what he wanted, that he had to first establish himself as an artist, uncertainly groping around on the way to his style.

No, everyone accepted with astonishment that there was a young Hupfer who pulled off happenings with his friends in the 1960s, but also painted objectively gray-on-grey from photos, developed a Pop Art style without US pandering;

that someone coolly presents colors as room installations, like the sample boards at the painter's supply store, but also paints in love with colour, sensually and glamorously non-representationally.

Richter's palette ranges from portraits to nudes, landscapes including mountains, veduta, seascapes, still lifes to interiors - and of course monochromes, color field painting, gestural agitated or intimate abstraction, endless layers with the squeegee (a kind of scraper), glass painting, constructivism , "Strips" pictures from own, digitally altered paintings and something like history paintings.

Embarrassment and failure threaten in this sensitive area.

The artist had depicted fighter planes early on.

He used photos from newspapers, for example, and copied the images, but distorted them by blurring them.

What had often been seen was perceived more clearly precisely because it was blurred and incorrect in front of one.

Richter proceeded in a similar way with family photographs dating from the Nazi era.

Gerhard Richter's key work: the "Atlas" cycle, here as a show in the Munich Kunstbau (2013).

© Marcus sleep

This oscillation between naming, obscuring and generalizing is most evident in the cycle “18.

October 1977”, written ten years after the death of the first RAF group.

And indeed, for young people, "Baader-Meinhof" is often just a glimpse of history from the old Federal Republic, but Richter's "Hanged Man" or "Shot Man" retain timeless validity.

He had to fail – and he probably always knew that – when he attempted to artistically confront the Nazi industrial genocide.

Again and again Richter had dealt with photographs from the concentration camps - also in the commissioned work for the Reichstag.

There he opted for the 20 meter high reflective colored glass surfaces “Black, Red, Gold”.

Nevertheless, the concentration camp motif would not let go of him.

Nothing recognizable developed from the struggle, but rather abstract painting, laborious colors in many layers.

The photos of them, which are the same size, are more honest and truthful than the “Birkenau” paintings (2014): they stand for the (must) fail in the face of the outrageous crime and the unbelievable suffering.

There are only pictures of pictures of pictures that make you inconsolable.

All important museums have “their” Gerhard Richter

All important museums have “their” judges, including the Bavarian State Painting Collections and the Lenbachhaus.

It even has "Atlas", Richter's key work to his oeuvre.

In addition to other concentration camp photos, the concentration camp crematorium photos that drove Richter to “Birkenau” can be found here.

He had been collecting working materials since the mid-1960s, mostly photos and sketches.

Shortly before the Wall was built in 1961, he fled to the West and found exactly the right environment at the Düsseldorf Art Academy to develop freely – without adapting.

From 1969 onwards, the doubter and reflective man systematically arranged “Atlas” into uniform (now more than 800) picture panels, the work became an archive and art installation in one.

It contains the maps of Richter's work - even with the pictures that are often used for postcards.