GERHARD RICHTER AT GALERIE LUDORFF
A
A
GERHARD RICHTER AT GALERIE LUDORFF
Gerhard Richter is without doubt one of the most important artists
of our time. Thanks to many outstanding exhibitions in leading museums
worldwide, a large number of people from very different cultural backgrounds
have become acquainted with and enthralled by the artist’s complex oeuvre. The
fascination most likely derives from the artist’s visual poignancy but foremost
from his immense conceptual range.
Since leaving East Germany in 1961 it has been difficult to peg
Gerhard Richter to any particular style. When arriving in West Germany the same
year, the artist radically broke with the ideologies of East Germany and the
body of work he had created there. Consequently, Richter’s catalogue raisonné
begins in 1962 with the first works he painted at the Kunstakademie in
Düsseldorf. Richter remained a skeptical artist throughout.
He never wanted to be associated with prevailing avantgarde
tendencies and movements that were already in place. Richter preferred to stand
apart. He began to paint copies of photographs, creating work whose conceptual
simplicity initially caused an outrage amongst fellow students. Private
photographs and found ones became the sources for still lifes, landscapes,
portraits and historical pictures.
Although Richter copied these found images in a realist manner, his
paintings of the time are great examples of his critical assessment of painting
and the use of imagery in general. Richter hardly ever reproduces the full
image. He rather focuses on
reproducing a certain detail and by applying the typical blur to
his paintings he subtly questions the viewers’ understanding of photography and
reality in general.
In the late 1970’s Richter moved on from purely painting these
“realist” paintings. He now began to simultaneously create more and more work
that dealt with the possibilities of abstract painting. The most important
groups of abstract pieces created at the time were his colour charts, the
series of gray monochrome paintings as well as the so-called “Vermalungen”, in
paintings that explore different possibilities of applying paint. Richter’s
visually rich Studie für ein abstraktes Bild (1978; pp. 52/53) bears witness to
the wealth of energy the artist invested in his abstract work by the time.
Richter furthermore began to explore different techniques. It is no surprise
that his first watercolours date back to the late 1970’s as
well. It needed another ten years though for Richter Gemäldeserien
entstehen im Kleinformat. Zwar gibt er in den Werken der Grün-Blau-Rot- und der Fuji-Serie,
von denen in der Ausstellung einige sehr schöne Exemplare gezeigt
werden können (vgl. S. 38-51), die Farben und die Reihenfolge des to pick up
watercolour painting again and to explore its possibilities in depth. His
watercolours of the early 1980’s acquired an astonishing maturity. Richter
continued to work without any ideological or theoretical approach. He seemed
rather to be driven by a childlike curiosity, an interest in experimentation, a
pure vision and a great joy of presenting his discoveries. Richter has explained
this by saying, “Seeing is the decisive act that places the producer and the
viewer on the same level.” At this time Richter began working on his
watercolours in a more painterly and open manner. He started applying
watercolours, fat chalks as well as pure pigments in a way that allowed chance
to influence the way individual layers of paint would partially overlap, block
each other out or repel one another.
He would work on his watercolours until a work would finally reach
a status that he would feel confident with. In doing so Richter created very
rich and intense works that he likes to look at as abstract landscapes. The
artist described this working method in an interview in 1999 as follows:
“Something evolves, as if by itself, something one only has to watch closely in
order to be able to step in at the right moment, in this case to stop it. It’s
more about being able to decide than being able to do something.” The
watercolours L 8 (1984, p. 23), Ohne Titel (29.5.84) (p. 25),
and Ohne Titel
(17.12.85) (p. 24) shown in
our exhibition are great examples of the aforementioned working method.
Richter’s watercolours of the 1980’s furthermore had a seminal
influence on the very productive phase of abstract oil painting that now
followed in his oeuvre. He abandoned watercolour painting again but very
successfully translated the aforementioned conceptual method of searching,
reflecting, and finding (without
a predefined pictorial idea) as well as the technical layering of
different colours of paint on top of each other into his canvas paintings.
Richter did so by applying the oil paint with a large squeegee, a kind of large
palette knife. By applying the paint onto and by scraping it over the canvas
using the rather large squeegee, Richter can never control exactly in which
areas of the canvas the paint will apply and where the
underlying support or the underlying layers of paint will remain
visible.“I really don’t have a particular picture in mind. I want to achieve a
picture that I didn’t plan at all. This working method of arbitrariness,
chance, inspiration, and destruction allows a
certain type of picture to be created, but never a predetermined
picture […]. I want something more interesting than what I can imagine.”
Richter Works step by step. He applies a layer of paint and reflects on the
result. This is being repeated until – in an unforeseeable moment – the artist
receives an image of a certain quality that meets his high expectations. The
paintings created this way often remind viewers
of studies of very fine and magnificently colourful layers of rock
unearthed by the artist. In the course of his protracted search, Richter has
often worked on several groups or series of paintings at the same time. Two of
his conceptually stricter series of paintings were done in a small format. In
his Grün-Blau-Rot and Fuji series (pp. 38-51) Richter
predefines the colours and the order in which they should be applied. Although
the concept remains the same in all works of the series the outcome is
often stunningly diverse. Our exhibition shows a beautiful
selection of works from both series. In certain individual works a soft
blending of colours combined with highly complex, detailed structures
dominates, whereas in other works a sharp contrast of colours prevails, causing
an enormous presence that some of these small-sized paintings have.
In the late 1980’s, Richter’s oeuvre evolved yet once again when he
brought realism and abstraction together in his small-sized oil on photograph
paintings. A group of six especially delicate overpainted photographs (pp.
9-21) created over the last two decades mark another focal point of our
exhibition. The great importance and beauty of this group of works is vividly
described by Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneede, to whom we are very grateful for kindly
letting us include his essay in this catalogue. We hope that you enjoy this
catalogue and we very much look forward to welcoming you to this exhibition.
The great importance and beauty of this group of works is vividly described by
Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneede, to whom we are very grateful for kindly letting us
include his essay in this catalogue. We hope that you enjoy this catalogue and
we very much lookforward to welcoming you to this exhibition.
A
L8 – 1984
A
UNTITLED 1985
A
ABSTRACT PAINTING 2004
A
A
GRAUWALD 2008
A
ABSTRACT PAINTING 2004
A
GRÜN – BLAU – ROT 789 - 38 / 1993
A
GRÜN – BLAU – ROT 789 - 84 / 1993
A
GRÜN – BLAU – ROT 789 - 76 / 1993
A
UNTITLED 1984
A
GRAUWALD 2008
A
UNTITLED 2008
A
GRÜN – BLAU – ROT ZU 789 / 1993
A
UNTITLED 1985
A
GRÜN – BLAU – ROT ZU 789 / 1993
A
ABSTRACTES BILD 1978
A
UNTITLED 1989
A
EIS 1981
MV18 – 2011
A
GERHARD RICHTER
