The exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler is the
largest ever in Switzerland to be devoted to Gerhard Richter (born in Dresden
in 1932, now based in Cologne), arguably the most important artist of our time.
It centers for the first time on the artist’s series, cycles, and interior
spaces. A counterpoint to these is formed by a number of single works, many of
which have achieved iconic status. Some hundred pictures are on show —
portraits, still-lifes, landscapes, abstract images — along with two glass
objects and sixty-four overpainted photographs. The selection encompasses the
major periods in Richter’s career since 1966, including recent works not yet
seen in public.
In a career spanning sixty years Richter has
created an oeuvre of striking thematic and stylistic variety. He has used
photographs as the basis of figurative paintings. His abstract works range from
pictures featuring color to monochrome fields and digitally generated
compositions. "If the abstract pictures show my reality, then the
landscapes and still-lifes show my yearning," he wrote in 1981. The artist
has also addressed recent history. The exhibition therefore includes the
legendary fifteen-part cycle from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, revolving
around the Baader-Meinhof gang and the events of October 18, 1977.
In the
1950s Richter studied mural painting at the Art Academy in Dresden. Since then
many sketches and statements by him have testified to the crucial role played
by architectural contexts in his work: "That is such a dream of mine —
that the pictures will become an environment or become architecture.” Richter’s
interest in the interaction between single pictures, groups of works, and the
surrounding spaces is explored vividly in the exhibition, which has been put together
by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in close cooperation with the artist.
http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/gerhard-richter/introduction
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