As of: February 24, 2024, 7:50 a.m
By: Katrin Hager
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Colorful variety of techniques: The creators of the exhibition “Work in the Plural”, (from left) Michael Beck, Sarah Sonderkamp and Thomas Olbricht, in front of a tapestry by Gerhard Richter.
© Thomas Plettenberg
It's the next big coup in the Gulbransson Museum - with the potential for record visitor numbers: The new special exhibition brings Gerhard Richter's work to Lake Tegernsee as a compressed overview.
Tegernsee
– Even if he only describes himself as an “image maker”: his works achieve record prices, his techniques are diverse, and his themes are deeply relevant, from the Holocaust to the German Autumn.
Gerhard Richter is considered the most important living artist in the world.
Now this big name is moving into the Olaf Gulbransson Museum in Tegernsee.
The special exhibition “Work in the Plural” opens on March 3, 2024.
It is dedicated to the edition work, i.e. Richter's unique series with limited quantities, and shows - in addition to his diversity of expression - how interconnected his work is: creating, reproducing, creating something new from it.
The coup is once again thanks to the contacts of Michael Beck, chairman of the Gulbransson Society, successful gallery owner and son of the painter Herbert Beck.
And above all Thomas Olbricht and his meticulousness as a collector.
It is the only one in the world that has Richter's complete edition and much more.
“If we had to collect all of this,” says Beck, pointing to the pictures that are currently ready to hang in the museum, “from different collectors – that would be impossible.”
Also interesting: This is what Michael Beck says about the show that breaks records
Beck describes the new special exhibition as a “small retrospective”, from 1965 to today.
In fact, it is more of a condensed overview of Gerhard Richter's fascination.
In terms of techniques - Richter is famous for his versatility - you can see almost everything that the now 92-year-old used.
Even his monumental “Black Red Gold” from the entrance hall of the Bundestag can be found on a smaller scale.
In two versions, so that you can see that even this supposedly same motif differs: in the colors.
New ideas, new inventions
That is the theme of the show “Work in the Plural” – the title goes back to the fact that Judge Olbricht once called “my collector in the plural”.
It shows how Richter works with the reproduction and modification of his work, in a sense in the evolution of Dürer and Warhol.
“With his editions he always tried to introduce new ideas and new inventions,” explains Olbricht.
The collector - professor of internal medicine, chemist and co-heir to Wella - enthusiastically collects treasures: stamps from childhood, later art, especially contemporary art.
He has been meticulously collecting Gerhard Richter's work for more than 30 years and even has personal contact with the reclusive artist.
It is important to Olbricht that art does not end up behind closed doors, but rather is made visible.
Nevertheless, Beck was flabbergasted when Olbricht unexpectedly answered yes to his question as to whether an exhibition could be held at the Gulbransson Museum.
Also read: Gerhard Richter – the incredible
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The final work is still underway to install a partition between the museum areas of the Bavarian State Painting Collections and the Gulbransson Society, but the hanging work has begun.
The two most famous Richter motifs – the iconic “Ema”, who floats naked and almost ethereally down a staircase, and her daughter “Betty”, facing away from the viewer in a red patterned jacket – can also be seen.
The “Dog” marks the start: The 1965 edition was the first that Gerhard Richter made.
Thomas Olbricht (l.) and Michael Beck show two examples from the exhibition.
© Thomas Plettenberg
58 years of editions – from 1965 to today
The editions form a ring from the first, the well-known “Dog” from the end of 1965, to the most recent from the end of 2023. 58 years.
Everything that Richter is famous for has found its place in between.
Oil paintings, painted over photographs, squeegeeed newspapers, painted records with the “Goldberg Variations”, even digital art and an abstract tapestry.
RAF terrorist Ulrike Meinhof can also be seen, whose portrait by photographer Inge-Maria Peters from 1966 was edited by Richter in 2015.
Here it becomes clear how much the artist experimented until he found the desired form of expression: in the middle hangs a copy from the published edition, accompanied by two rejected test versions in which Richter heavily scratched the portrait and painted over it.
Even Richter's monumental church window in Cologne Cathedral is echoed in the exhibition: it shows the color combinations that the artist arranged not according to aesthetic but rather mathematical aspects, as curator Sarah Sonderkamp explains.
This is illustrated by a draft paper that Olbricht was able to get hold of.
The art patron is not only a collector, but also a hunter when it comes to Gerhard Richter's work.
Once you get to that point, he says, you can't just stop.
By this he doesn't just mean what he calls the “stage of incipient addiction”.
But rather his responsibility as the guardian of Gerhard Richter's complete work.
Two rejected experiments and one result: In 2015, Gerhard Richter and photographer Inge-Maria Peters created an edition of her portrait photo of Ulrike Meinhof.
© Thomas Plettenberg
Soft opening to start
The Gerhard Richter exhibition “Work in the Plural” in the Olaf Gulbransson Museum in Tegernsee opens on Sunday, March 3, 2024, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. with a soft opening with free admission for all visitors.
A high-quality catalog will also be published, announces Michael Beck.
The exhibition will be on display until July 28, 2024.