Gerhard Richter. Survey

Gerhard Richter belongs among the best internationally recognized modern German artists next to Sigmar Polke and Georg Baselitz. German Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) has gathered 27 characteristic pieces from Ricter’s all periods for display. The artist’s own selection can be regarded as a retrospective in nuce – a close-up of all his creative phases from photorealism of the 1960’s to abstract works from the 1980.–90’s In Kumu, Richter’s “Survey" is accompanied by a series of paintings called “Mainstream" by young Estonian painter Tõnis Saadoja – a series of Richter’s portraits in mixed technique, inspired by "48 portraits" – a series painted by the classic. The exhibition is open from June 6 to August 17, 2008.

The main and largely only topic in Gerhard Richter’s heritage, overruling all motifs, styles and quotes from art history, is the art of painting, which means of expression are addressed by the artist in a variety of heterogenic formats over and over again. This reveals his mistrust towards stylistic and contextual bonds – mistrust with roots lying in his personal biography. In 1961, moving from Dresden to Düsseldorf, he switched not only a social and political milieu, but also his artistic environment. Leaving East-Germany, he discarded the traditions of social realism and entered a dialogue with the late informal art of painting (L'Art Informel) and the new emerging pop art. This substantial change left him doubting in everything set and determined in art: „I follow no intentions or system, no direction. I lack programme, style and target," Richter said in 1966. He regards the art of painting as an activity, as a quest for truth taking place here and now: "Hence what I have often regarded as my defect, when I’ve been unable to "create a picture", is not my inability but instinctive aspiration to capture the modern truth we currently live in (life is not what has been said but saying it; not an image but an act of depicting)". (3.11.1989)

Gerhard Richter uses photography – the antipode of the art of painting – as a comparative filter of painting. In 1962 he, for the first time, used photo as a source material of painting. From there on, he has systematically collected photos to base his paintings on. This way, he has established an archive of his own and published photos, extending from 1945 to today and including newspaper clippings, amateur snapshots and the photos he has taken. For the first time, the archive was presented as an individual work named “Atlas" in 1972. From this photo-archive, Gerhard Richter selects motifs that he enlarges or segments on his paintings. This way his paintings, accurately representing the out-of-focus area on photos, bluntly reveal their roots in the banal world of mass media or amateur photography. The art of painting as an intention manifests only vaguely, as by translating photography into painting, Richter reduces colours into even grey tones. This way he liberates painting from an object that fully disperses in Richter’s "grey paintings" of the end of the 1960’s – grey manifests indifference and nothingness for Richter. Later, he returns to colours and his abstract works of the 1980’s again represent integral multilayer painting.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.

The exhibition is an event belonging to Deutschen Kulturfrühling 2008 in Estland We thank: Deutches Kulturinstitut Tallinn /Goethe Institut, Deutche Botschaft Tallinn

Gerhard Richter. Survey