Gerhard Richter Panorama
12 February - 13 May 2012
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| Gerhard Richter
Neger (Nuba) / Negroes (Nuba), 1964
Öl auf Leinwand
145 x 200 cm
© Gerhard Richter 2011 / Courtesy Gagosian Gallery |
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GERHARD RICHTER PANORAMA
12 February - 13 May, 2012
Gerhard Richter, beyond a doubt the most famous German artist of his
generation, will be celebrating his eightieth birthday on 9 February
2012. To mark the occasion, the New National Gallery in Berlin is
holding a sweeping retrospective of his work, in conjunction with Tate
Modern in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Around 150 paintings from all periods of the artist's extensive oeuvre,
carefully selected together with the artist himself, offer visitors a
profound insight into his stylistically and thematically diverse body of
work. Several canvases that have long been accepted into the modern
canon, such as Ema (1966), the nude descending the stairs, and Betty
(1988), whose head is turned away from the viewer, are combined here
with rarely seen works and a few that have never been on display before.
Key works from a particular period, group or series are placed
alongside works that either stand out on their own or pre-echo later
developments. Structured for the most part chronologically, the
exhibition's dramaturgical flow centres around a dialogue, running over
decades, held between abstraction and figuration; a dialogue that can be
traced all the way back to the very first painting in Richter's
catalogue raisonné, Table from 1962.
The exhibition demonstrates how the artist's rigorous and unrelentingly
versatile inquiry into the medium of painting has led to consistent
transgressions of its traditions and definitions. The idea of the
picture as a surface, as a window, as a view onto a scene leads to
Richter's exploration of mirrors and panes of glass, marking the
culmination of his probing of the possibilities of depiction. At this
point in the show, the works form a unique interplay with the building
itself. Richter's panes of glass, glass screens and his astoundingly
mimetic cloud and window paintings strike up a playful and charming
dialogue with Mies van der Rohe's architecture of glass and steel. The
Berlin show will also feature a unique highlight: for the express
purpose of the exhibition, Gerhard Richter has completed Version I of
his abstract, aleatoric work 4900 Colours which, at a length of over 200
metres, will encompass the entire exhibition.
www.neue-nationalgalerie.de
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