Gerhard Richter, Birkenau, 2014, (detail). Gerhard Richter Kunststiftung © Gerhard Richter Kunststiftung
April 1, 2023–2026
The Gerhard Richter Kunststiftung has given 100 works to the Nationalgalerie on permanent loan. Beginning in April 2023, the Neue Nationalgalerie will put this loan on display in its entirety for the first time.
The central work in the exhibition is the series Birkenau (2014), consisting of four large-format, abstract paintings. Birkenau is the result of Richter’s long and in-depth engagement with the Holocaust and the possibilities of representing it. The works are based on four photographs taken in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, which the artist transposed to four canvases before gradually painting over them. With each layer of paint, the depiction of the photographic original disappeared a little more, until it eventually became invisible. The work also includes a large four-part mirror, which is positioned opposite the four Birkenau canvases, creating another level of reflection.
Alongside the Birkenau series, other loaned works from various phases of Richter’s career will be exhibited, among them Squatters’ House (1989) and 6 Standing Panes (2002). There is also another large group of works from Richter’s striking series of overpainted photographs.
This is a special exhibition of the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Learn more at Neue Nationalgalerie.
David Zwirner is pleased to announce the representation of the German artist Gerhard Richter. The gallery will present its first solo exhibition of works by the artist in New York in March 2023.
Gerhard Richter is celebrated worldwide as one of the most important artists of his generation, with a career spanning from the 1960s to the present. His diverse and influential practice has been characterized by a decades-long commitment to painting and its formal and conceptual possibilities. In his work, the dual modes of representation and abstraction fundamentally question the way in which we relate to images. Richter has probed the relationship between painting and photography, engaging a variety of styles and innovative techniques in a complex repositioning of genres such as abstraction, still life, landscape painting, history painting, and chance-based practices. Richter’s vast oeuvre, which also includes objects, installation, drawing, and photographic documentation, is grounded in deeply nuanced investigations of history, memory, and representation.
As stated by David Zwirner, “To be able to work with Gerhard Richter is an immense honor and a great privilege. Richter has, without a doubt, created one of the most conceptually complex and aesthetically heterogeneous oeuvres in the history of art. By avoiding adherence to any single ideology or dogma, Richter has been able to both celebrate and subvert the very act of painting. In the process, he has single-handedly opened up the medium to entirely new possibilities and investigations. Now I’m looking forward to our first exhibition together in the spring of 2023 in New York. I want to acknowledge the important work Marian Goodman and everyone at the Marian Goodman Gallery has done for and with Gerhard Richter over the past thirty-seven years, and I’m humbled to be given this opportunity.”
Gerhard Richter stated: “I’m happy to be represented by David Zwirner. I have known David since his childhood as I had already in the 1960s worked closely with his father, Rudolf Zwirner. I feel this represents a beautiful continuity across generations.”
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Cover image: Gerhard Richter. © Werner Bartsch