German artist Gerhard Richter will in future be represented by the New York gallery David Zwirner.
The first solo exhibition with works by the 90-year-old is set to be shown in New York in March 2023, the gallery founded in 1993 Zwirner announced.
It is an “immense honour and privilege” to be able to work with Richter, Zwirner was quoted as saying.
“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.”
Richter, who lives in Cologne, is considered one of the most important and successful contemporary artists.
“I am happy to be represented by David Zwirner,” the 90-year-old, who was previously with the Marian Goodman gallery for almost 40 years, was quoted as saying.
“I have known David since he was a child and worked closely with his father, Rudolf Zwirner, back in the 1960s. It feels to me like a wonderful continuity across generations.”
Rudolf Zwirner owns gallery in Cologne. His son David Zwirner now has several galleries in New York as well as branches in London and Hong Kong, among other places. ©dpa
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.
Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) was born in Dresden, Germany. He studied art at the Dresden Hochschule für Bildende Künste from 1951 to 1956, with mural painting as his concentration.
In 1959, he visited documenta II, held in Kassel, Germany, an experience that inspired him to alter his artistic trajectory.
After his escape from East Germany in 1961, he completed a second course of study at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. There, he united with his fellow students Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg, and Manfred Kuttner to collectively form the short-lived “Capitalist Realism”group.
From 1964 onward, Richter had many solo exhibitions in renowned commercial galleries in Europe, among them the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf (1964); Galerie Friedrich & Dahlem, Munich (1964, 1966); City-Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich (1966); Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome (1966); Wide White Space, Antwerp (1967); Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich (1967); Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne (1968); and Galleria del Naviglio, Milan (1969).
Richter’s first solo exhibition in a public institution was held at the Gegenverkehr, Zentrum für aktuelle Kunst, in Aachen, Germany, in 1969.
In 1972 Richter was selected as the only artist to represent Germany in its National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
His work has been presented in numerous solo shows and retrospective exhibitions at important international institutions, including Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (1971, 1986); Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany (1975); Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1977, 2012); Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf (1986); Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (1986, 2012); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (1988, 2003); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1989, 2002); Tate, London (1991, 2011); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1993); The Art Institute of Chicago (2002); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2002); Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2017); The Met Breuer, New York (2020); and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2022).
Gerhard Richter has exhibited at documenta, in Kassel, Germany, more times than any other artist (1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2007, and 2017).
Richter has been honored with a number of significant awards, among them the Kunstpreis Junger Westen, Recklinghausen, Germany (1967); Arnold-Bode-Preis, Kassel, Germany (1981); Oskar-Kokoschka-Preis, Vienna (1985); Goslarer Kaiserring, Goslar, Germany (1988); Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997); Praemium Imperiale Award, Tokyo (1997); Wexner Prize, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (1998); Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (1998); Staatspreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2000); and the Kunst- und Kulturpreis der deutschen Katholiken, Bonn, Germany (2004).
In 2007 Gerhard Richter received an honorary citizenship of Cologne, Germany, and in the same year he designed a spectacular glass window for the Cologne Cathedral.
David Zwirner organized an exhibition of Richter’s prints and multiples in New York in 1994, in the gallery’s first twelve months of programming. Richter’s work was also the subject of exhibitions at the gallery in 2000 (Gerhard Richter: Early Paintings) and in 2004 (Gerhard Richter: Landscapes).
Work by Gerhard Richter is held in important public and private collections worldwide. He lives and works in Cologne. (Via David Zwirner Gallery)
