Gerhard Richter opens retrospective in Prague
German artist Gerhard Richter, whose paintings have sold at record prices, has opened a 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 Central and 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 on the horrors of the Nazi Auschwitz 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 citizens. The portrait is of Richter’s uncle as a Nazi soldier.
Born in what after the war became communist East Germany, Richter fled for West Germany in 1961. He said in Prague this week that he was inspired by the great masters of the past such as Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Duerer and many others. He said he also was influenced by the contemporary post-war art scene, including conceptual art, pop art and other styles. “There’s uncertainty in it, uncertainty about what to do next,’’ he said about the changes in his body of work. “There’s chaos in it. A loss of orientation. I’d like to try something new. One does what he can.’’
In 2015, a 1986 painting by Richter, Abstract Painting, sold for US$46.3 million (1.6 billion baht). It is an auction record for a work by a living European artist. Prague’s exhibition runs from Wednesday until Sept 3.