This superbly illustrated, large format book is the definitive retrospective of Gerhard Richter's genre-defying, boundary-blurring, and constantly evolving oeuvre.
One of the world's most revered visual artists, Gerhard Richter embraces many concepts in his work and continually thwarts categorization. In this expansive and authoritative overview, renowned art historian Armin Zweite leads readers through every phase of Richter's celebrated career including his early artistic education in East Germany and his later prolific output in West Germany: the black and white photo paintings, the brilliantly conceived color charts and lush, inscrutable gray paintings, installations with glass and mirrors, his landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, and his monumental abstract paintings, which broke records at auction. Also included are selections from Richter's larger-scale thematic works, such as Atlas, his ongoing collection of photographs and newspaper clippings, and October 18, 1977, a series of paintings commemorating the lives and deaths of members of a German left-wing terrorist group. The beautiful plates sections feature exquisite reproductions of more than 250 of his most famous works, including Ten Large Color-Charts (1966), Annunciation after Titian (1973), Faust (1980), Skull with Candle (1983), Funeral (1988), Strip (2012), and Double Gray (2014). Throughout, Zweite's clear-eyed commentary offers an expert appraisal of the breadth of Richter's oeuvre. This six-decade monograph of Richter's work is a visually stunning and articulate appreciation by one of the world's foremost experts on the artist and his life.
Biography
Armin Zweite
Armin Zweite is a renowned art historian, curator, and author. He has served as director of a number of museums, including the Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, and the Brandhorst Collection in Munich. He is the author of seminal books on Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Richard Serra, and others.
Gerhard Richter, b. 1932 in Dresden, Germany, is one of the most well-known contemporary artists. His early art training took place in the German Democratic Republic before he left for West Germany in 1962. He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Karl Otto Götz. Since then his art has taken many directions, with apparently arbitrary changes of techniques, styles, and motifs. Remarkably versatile but always captivating and executed at the highest level, Richter’s oeuvre mirrors the contradictions and self-doubts of an artistic existence that challenges the ofteninvoked end of painting by constantly opening up new territories for it instead.
