Richter retrospective showing in Prague

80 works covering the entire career of influential German artist on display

PRAGUE German artist Gerhard Richter, whose paintings have sold at record prices, has opened his retrospective exhibition at Prague’s National Gallery.

The gallery has put on display almost 80 works by Richter, one of the most influential contemporary artists, in what is the first such exhibition in Eastern Europe.

The works cover the entire career of the 85-year-old, including his first work of photographic realism — blurred paintings based on real photographs — of the 1960s and the later abstract paintings he is known for.

They include a series called Birkenau, a reflection of horrors in the Nazi death camp.

In the 1960s, Richter donated one of his paintings, Uncle Rudi, to Lidice, a Czech town destroyed in 1942 by the Nazis, who also killed all its 173 male inhabitants.

The portrait is of Richter’s uncle as a Nazi soldier.

Born in what after the war became communist East Germany, Most of the works are exhibited in the Kinsky Palace at the Old Town Square in the heart of the Czech capital, while a few more paintings are on display at the nearby Convent of St. Agnes of Bohemia. Admission: 250 koruna ($10). Discounts for seniors, family, children and students.

Richter fled for West Germany in 1961.

He said in Prague on Tuesday he was inspired by the great masters of the past such as Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer and many others.

He said he was influenced by the contemporary postwar art scene.

“There’s uncertainty in it, uncertainty about what to do next,” he said about the changes in his paintings.

In 2015, Richter’s Abstract Painting (1986) sold for $46.3 million.

It’s an auction record for a work by a living European artist.

Prague’s exhibition runs until Sept 3.