gerhard richter - pompidou centre - press pack

COMMUNICATIONS ANDPARTNERSHIPS DEPARTMENT

PRESS PACK

GERHARD RICHTERPANORAMA

6 JUNE - 24 SEPTEMBER 2012

GERHARD RICHTER

GERHARD RICHTERPANORAMA 6 JUNE - 24 SEPTEMBER 2012 GALERIE 1, LEVEL 6

CONTENTS

1. PRESS RELEASE PAGE 3

2. PRESENTATION OF THE EXHIBITION PAGE 5

3. EXTRACT FROM THE CATALOGUE PAGE 10

4. EXTRACTS FROM NICHOLAS SEROTA’S INTERVIEW

WITH GERHARD RICHTER PAGE 14

5. CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE PAGE 17

6. PUBLICATIONS PAGE 20

7. LIST OF WORKS PRESENTED IN THE EXHIBITION PAGE 21

8. IMAGES FOR THE PRESS PAGE 28

9. USEFUL INFORMATION PAGE 31

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Communications andPartnerships Department75191 Paris cedex 04

DirectorFrançoise Pamstelephone00 33 (0)1 44 78 12 [email protected]

press officerCéline Janviertelephone00 33 (0)1 44 78 49 [email protected]

www.centrepompidou.fr

21 May 2012

PRESS RELEASEGERHARD RICHTERPANORAMA 6 JUNE - 24 SEPTEMBER 2012 GALERIE 1, LEVEL 6

From June 6th 2012, the Centre Pompidou pays tribute to Gerhard Richter, one of the great figures of contemporary painting. The result of a team effort with London’s Tate Modern, and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Panorama retrospective at the Centre Pompidou brings together a selection of 150 major works by Gerhard Richter. The artist has been fully involved in the original design conceived specifically for the exhibition which offers a double insight, both chronological and thematic, into his career from the 1960’s until his most recent works.

“I pursue no objectives, no system, no tendency; I have no programme, no style, no direction. I like the indefinite, the boundless. I like continual uncertainty.”

Gerhard Richter has this uncanny ability to reinvent and transform himself, and yet every time to push his work into a new direction and to promote a new vision of painting and of art history. Ever since the start of his career, Gerhard Richter has been experimenting with radically different pictorial styles. Thus, moving away in the seventies from the “photo-paintings” he had created from photographs in the early sixties, Richter embraced a new form of abstraction in which he blended colour grids, gestural abstraction and monochromes. All through the 1980’s he kept reinventing the historical genres of the portrait, landscape and historical painting, imbuing them with his own erudite and innovative manner. At the same time, he was also exploring a new kind of abstract paintings suffused with acid colours in which geometric and gestural shapes dissolve. In the 1990s, the artist fine-tuned what would become his signature technique of spreading wet paint with a large wooden or metal board.

Communications andPartnerships Department75191 Paris cedex 04

DirectorFrançoise Pamstelephone00 33 (0)1 44 78 12 [email protected]

press officerCéline Janviertelephone00 33 (0)1 44 78 49 [email protected]

www.centrepompidou.fr

Betty [Betty]1988Oil on canvas102 ! 72 cm Saint Louis Art Museum

30 April 2012

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His first exhibition in a French museum took place at the Centre Pompidou in 1977. In addition to celebrating the artist’s 80th birthday, Panorama is a tribute to one of the greatest painters of the past fifty years.

The catalogue Gerhard Richter. Panorama is published by the Éditions du Centre Pompidou and edited by Camille Morineau, curator of the exhibition and at the Musée national d’art moderne.

Organised by Centre Pompidou in association with Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Tate Modern, London

At the same time the Louvre presents Gerhard Richter, Dessins et aquarelles, 1957-2008, from June 7th to september 17th 2012.

The exhibition Gerhard Richter has been supported by LVMH / Moët Hennessy . Louis Vuitton

In media partnership with

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2. PRESENTATION OF THE EXHIBITION

PLAN OF TH

E EXHIB

ITION

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EXHIBITION OVERVIEW

ROOM 1 PAINTING PHOTOGRAPHY

Gerhard Richter appeared on the European scene in the early 1960s with works inspired directly from photographs, which he called “photo-paintings”. He immediately became established as an alternative to American Pop Art and European informal art, defending a new vision of painting.His works, produced on the basis of his own photographs or images selected from the newspapers are imbued with a strict expressive neutrality. However, his selection of subjects made him one of the first artists of his generation to face up to Germany’s Nazi past and the emergence of a Western consumer culture.The fidelity to the original image is the result of a classic duplication procedure: after squaring up the photos, the image is enlarged by means of an episcope, then recopied onto the chosen medium. The final blurred effect is obtained by rubbing the still-wet paint with a brush, either in horizontal bands or by blurring the edges.

ROOM 2 INHERITING A TRADITION

Richter disagreed with Marcel Duchamp’s proclamations on the end of painting as an artistic medium, stressing its powerful link with reality. With his large canvases representing landscapes, mountains, clouds and seascapes, he has established himself as an heir to the German Romantic tradition. His vast spaces where nature is the only protagonist recall the melancholy panoramas of Caspar David Friedrich. Richter invites us to undergo a spiritual experience linked to the contemplation of a grandiose nature; sublimated and impenetrable. With his Clouds series, which he began in 1968, he nevertheless borrows from Duchamp the notion of chance of which the latter was so fond. This ever-changing, unpredictable and inconsistent motif enabled him to oppose even the very idea of form, and to define a method of anti-composition.

ROOM 3 OPPOSING THE MOTIF

In the late 1960s, Gerhard Richter’s pictorial language underwent its first radical shift with his first non-figurative compositions. These canvases extend the experiment with chance begun in the Clouds series, but developing towards abstraction. In the Colour Charts, inspired by the colour samples offered in paint shops, the artist suppresses any figurative element, gesture or message. The rectangles are faultless, the colours smooth and uniform. The layout may be random but the rectangles are laid out according to a strictly determined protocol. During the same period, Richter returned to his photo-paintings and created the Details series; photographs of details of existing paintings enlarged and projected onto canvas. The chromatism of this series enabled him to experiment in a different manner with a range of infinite shades.

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ROOM 4RELEASING ABSTRACTION

Following the first experiments with non-figurative language, the works of the 1980s present more lyrical compositions: the gesture surges with energy, splattered paint, brushstrokes and flat sweeps of colour challenge one another, creating breathtaking contrasts on canvases of frequently monumental format.Rapid movement alternates with more careful work with the aerograph and brush; the process of creation is long and laborious. The artist often allows several months to pass between the layers of paint. This pictorial space is not constructed to be harmonious, but complex: the paintings of Richter function like models “of a varied and constantly changing world”.The 1980s mark the beginning of the large abstract canvases which today represent two thirds of the artist’s production and which have earned him international recognition.

ROOM 5REVEALING CHANCE

In the 1990s, Gerhard Richter continued to paint abstract canvases using a large wooden plank and a metal squeegee which spreads the still-wet paint and gives it a fluid aspect with multiple hues. Once he has applied several layers of paint, Richter scrapes them in broad vertical and horizontal movements. The colour is randomly fixed to the canvas and the interplay of superimposition creates unexpected mattered effects. The veil of paint thus spread partially hides the underlying surface and allows only some details of the canvas to emerge. Often, at a later stage, the artist scratches and tears off pieces of canvas in an ongoing process of construction and deconstruction.As with his abstracts from the preceding decade, Richter accepts the appearance of figurative forms in these works, and explains how this is often inevitable: the spectator cannot prevent him or herself from seeing something even in the most abstract paintings, “because everything is rooted in the world; everything relates in some way to the world and experience”.

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ROOM 6 SEEING THROUGH: GREY AND GLASS

Closely paralleling his personal worries, Richter began to paint dark works in a period of uncertainty and unhappiness. These were born during a destructive instant in which the artist, dissatisfied with the result of a figurative painting, decided to erase it by covering it with a layer of grey paint. Although identical at first sight, each canvas is different from the others: the shades of grey, the modulations of the light on the surface, the way in which the paint is spread out with a roller, paintbrush or fingers; all produce a set of optical variations.Another device enabling the artist to force an acuteness of regard on spectators, the Panes of Glass implode the concept of painting as a window open onto the world. Glass, which Richter has used throughout his career, also led him to work with mirrors, starting in the early 1980s.

ROOM 7RETHINKING CLASSICISM

Among the paintings of the classical genre revisited by Richter, landscapes find an increasingly important place in his work. Always painted from photographs taken during his travels or of his surrounding environment, these canvases give pride of place to nature and the sky, without any human presence. The sometimes misty, diaphanous, opaque atmosphere obtained through the use of various techniques of shading accentuates their melancholic and atemporal nature.

ROOM 8REVEALING INTIMACY

Richter painted his first portraits in the mid 1960s. The most recent, Ella (his second daughter) dates from 2007. This portrait gallery is composed solely of representations of people close to the artist, and, exceptionally, a self-portrait. In 1965, Gerhard Richter painted his uncle Rudi, his aunt Marianne and his father Horst. He painted his uncle in Nazi uniform, taking inspiration from a photograph in which he posed, smiling, and which was taken shortly before he died in the war. The portrait of his mentally fragile aunt Marianne is based on a photograph showing her with Richter as a child, before she was killed by the Germans as part of the Third Reich’s eugenics programme. The dark atmosphere of these first portraits is directly linked to the traumatic experience of the war. But a feeling of intimacy both sublime and natural also emanates from the portraits of his wife and children, and of his friends and family.

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ROOM 918 OCTOBER 1977

Following his indirect references to Germany’s past in some of the 1960s photo-paintings, Richter took up historical painting once again in 1988. The series, entitled “18 October 1977”, evokes the date of the death of the leaders of the revolutionary Baader-Meinhof group on 18 October 1977 in Stammheim prison. Under the single title of this fateful date, these fifteen paintings based on press photographs describe a series of events which took place over a longer period; the arrest, death and funerals of the founder members of the RAF (Red Army Faction): Holger Meins, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe. The artist here creates a kind of profane chapel of remembrance to this traumatic event in German history.

ROOM 10 CONTINUING TO PAINT

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3. EXTRACT FROM THE CATALOGUE Some Interpretations of the Word “Panorama”: Exhibition, Reflection, Overview and Freeze FrameBy Camille Morineau, Curator of the exhibition

Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932; this exhibition was a celebration of his eightieth birthday. One of the leading figures in the contemporary art world, he explored new relationships between painting and photography in the early sixties, created a new kind of abstraction at the start of the 1970s, and, then, in the 1980s, reinterpreted historical genres such as portraiture, historical painting, and landscape, in an erudite, unexpected fashion. With each decade, from his early recognition at international exhibitions (he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale as early as 1972) all the way to a number of retrospectives (the last took place at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2002), this important painter has astonished us not only with his aptitude for self reinvention, but also with his ability to transform the very history of painting with each new path he takes.

Panorama is, first and foremost, the title of a catalogue, the making of which is the result of collective effort, much like the exhibition itself. It is organized into six chapters each covering approximately a decade, and describes the issues, the oeuvre (both that which has been exhibited and that which is not for public display), the public commissions, the sketches, the sheets for Atlas, and the artist’s writings. “Panorama,” then, also describes the structure of an exhibition that aimed to make the public aware of the richness of this oeuvre, a richness that changes at each step along the way. Finally, we added “Panorama” to the word “retrospective” to underline the effect of condensed temporality that Richter’s work creates today. In the 19th Century, a panorama brought together unity of time and place. Is that coherency — a coherency based on a relationship to ancient history, on recurrences and mirror effects — that we wanted to recreate, particularly for the Parisian incarnation of the exhibition, and it was for this reason that we made the exhibition’s narrative a thematic one.

The panorama, invented in 1787 and popularized in the 19th Century, consisted of a large, convex painting installed in a big, black room: visitors reached it via a platform, and then found themselves surrounded by an immense image, usually a cityscape or battle scene. The illusion was all the more effective because the upper and lower edges of the painting were invisible, as were the light sources. Pedagogy and pleasure were in competition: the eye devoured the illusion more readily than it would have an actual landscape, which would have been geographically or historically inaccessible anyway. In our retrospective exhibition, like in any panorama, not everything is represented; however, we have tried to represent the multiple facets of the artist’s oeuvre in a single space. This would have been impossible without the artist’s help, and I hereby take this opportunity to thank him once again. We drew up a general list of works, then, in consultation with the artist, each curator defined how that list should be adapted to a specific institution, public, or country—which works should be added or removed, for example, or how they should be displayed or hung.

While the artist was indeed generous with his time and open to our suggestions, the collaboration between curators was also an exciting experience. London curators Mark Godfrey and Nicholas Serota and their German counterparts, Dorothée Brill and Udo Kittelmann, were attentive colleagues whose comments and choices enriched the overview of Richter’s oeuvre exhibited in Paris. In London, the visitor followed a chronological path through Richter’s work, and the emphasis was on his abstract oeuvre. This was fitting in a city that is more familiar with his figurative painting (his Portraits were exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2009). In Berlin, the open, transparent architecture of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie was set off by the presence of Richter’s

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4 900 Colours Version I (2007) all around the building. In Paris, the exhibition design was inspired by the nineteenth-century panorama: the visitor wandered around the work from a central, triangular room (the headland), discovering each theme as it appeared in chronological order (the landscape). This “headland” was not only geographical, but historical too: the grey monochromes and glass panels recalled Richter’s first exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 1977 — the year the museum opened, and the same year as the Marcel Duchamp retrospective. It was also a metaphorical headland: firstly because the room’s triangular shape evoked the representative schema of the eye’s angle of vision; but also because all of the works––from the monochromes and greys to the mirrors and works on, under, or in glass, and from the 1960s to the present day — have consistently and acutely radically questioned the process of vision.

This category of Richter’s paintings and sculpture is one of the least known and valued today; however, the central position accorded to it in the Parisian version of “Panorama” was the result of an interpretative decision, one that only the benefit of hindsight made possible. It reflected the important place that these works occupy at the heart of Richter’s work, and more precisely, the way in which these specific elements allow us to reread his oeuvre. Both the works in glass, and their reflections—the mirrors—allow us to rediscover a corpus-in-process, the work of reflection and mise en abyme, of doubles, repetitions, and symbols. The mirror, an object Richter uses daily to watch his work in the process of being made, has been a device common to many artists since the dawn of the art form itself. It also served as a stage prop in the joint 1981 Gerhard Richter/Georg Baselitz exhibition: Richter installed actual mirrors, the size of large paintings, in the exhibition space as a means of “responding” to the importance of Baselitz in Germany at the time (he was a kind of master for the rising generation of German fauves). Rather than engaging in dialogue with the pictorial neo-impressionist gestures literally reflected in Baseltiz’s work, then, these objects stood against them in brutal visual and symbolic contrast. A year later (CR: 485-1/2) and again in 1988 (CR: 619), these “mirror-devices” became works in their own right. In the meantime, 1986’s little Mirrors [Spiegel] (CR: 619) have rise to a new edition of his work. The paintings and sculptures created from more or less reflective glass, painted over or under, first appeared as early as 1967 and were then regularly produced, becoming particularly prevalent at the beginning of the 2000’s. From a retrospective point of view, mirrors and glass today represent two of the most original series of Richter’s oeuvre: astonishingly diverse,1 they are essential to an understanding of the artist’s work, as he himself has suggested on several occasions: “It is the only image that constantly changes. And perhaps the sign that shows us that all images are mirrors.”2

But if we look a little closer, other works that use neither mirrors nor glass also call the idea of reflection into question. We know that the first Seascapes are collages in which the sky and sea sometimes blend together in an artificial horizon.3 The book Ice [Eis] (1981) is another striking example, where Richter arranges over one hundred of the black-and-white photographs of the reflection of icebergs in still waters that he had taken during a trip to Greenland in 1982. These photographs explore the multiple possibilities of these reflective games: up to four of them are laid out per double page, and sometimes on the other side as well, so that the book can be read from front to back or vice versa — in other words, in all directions. The mirror games, inversions, reflections and variations on similar images in Ice are not all that far from the abstract pictorial work in the making. The majority of Richter’s monumental abstract paintings from the 1980s are diptychs, both true and false, in which an actual or implicit symmetry organizes how we read the work.4 While some pairs are clearly suggested by shared titles followed by a I or a II,5 others are merely evoked by titles that are similar to those of similarly sized or identically composed works.6 In this way, many of the figurative paintings are clearly organized in pairs, or doubles. Two works with the same title or subject matter are often painted together: there are two almost identical Davos from 1981; two reversed Crânes, one with a candle, from 1983; two Apple [Äpfel] (CR: 560-1 et 2) studies from 1984, which differ only in their frames; two differently-sized Staubach (CR: 572), also from 1984; two views of Venice [Venedig] (CR: 586-1 and 3), both dating from 1985; two almost identical Chinon in 1987;

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and two views of Landscape near Koblenz [Landschaft bei Koblenz] (CR: 639, 640) from the same year. Doubling also appears to have been the rule for the figurative paintings of the 1990s.7

Doubles that are spaced out in time, sometimes as much as ten years apart, are even more revelatory. These are less the repetition of a specific motif than of a theme: a portrait of the same person, a kind of bouquet of flowers, a wall with a landscape as background, a traumatic event in history. It is as if for each significant work created, another will appear, albeit not always immediately and with a visibly different point of view. Black and white and colour, the historical and the personal: both versions exist. Two women coming down a flight of stairs (CR: 92) in 1965 and (CR: 134) in 1966; Olympia and Diane, the “mirror images” of each other in 1967; even apparently isolated works such as Chicago (1992) end up finding a reversed double eight years later (Juist); Betty, who lounges in an initial 1977 portrait, turns away from the viewer in another, painted eleven years later. And isn’t it possible to see September (2005) as the double of October (1989)?Another great 20th-Century painter, Matisse, used this technique in his Paires and Series; the Centre Pompidou exhibited these at the same time as “Panorama,” in an exhibition that not only exposed the technique for the first time, but, by virtue of its co-presence with the Richter retrospective, highlighted this shared trait in the work of the two painters.

en abyme

In addition to reproducing his own work, either exactly or with slight modifications, Richter has been reproducing masterpieces since the early 1960s. Whether these reproductions are faithful copies or interpretations, they are always a form of respect. Quite apart from his regular references to Duchamp, we can cite such works as Family after Old Master [Familie nach Altem Meister] (CR: 26; 1965), inspired by a John Singleton Copley portrait of his family (1776), or the 1973 series, Annunciation after Titian [Verkündigung nach Tizian] that he created from a postcard of the painting. During the 1980s, he paid homage to Chardin and Morandi in a less direct fashion, with his still lifes of apples and bottles; to Poussin with his large landscapes; to Ingrès’ The Valpinçon Bather (1808) with the portrait of Betty turning away from him; and to Vermeer with Reader [Lesende], in which his young wife adopts the same pose as the Woman Reading a Letter (1657). Unlike many twentieth-century artists, Richter does not situate himself solely within the modern tradition: he is as resolutely classical in the works he chooses as his references as he is in the way he evokes them. And indeed, he references such masters with no irony, unlike other painters — the American Pop Artists or the European New Realists — who, like Richter, have used photography to appropriate or cite the works of former masters. We are far from Lichenstein’s playful versatility here, with his chaotic rendition of the style of modern masters as they are seen on the other side of the Atlantic; nor are we close to the same games played by Martial Raysse in France. Consider the classical genre of vanitas, specially the motif of the skull: while Richter’s Skulls might share the melancholy of those of Polke in the series the latter dedicated to Goya, or of those of Warhol (1976), they are also distinguished by their stylistic neutrality, their smooth, expert touch, and the presence of the candle that sometimes lights them. Richter not only paints the subject matter of the master, but he does so in the style of the masters: this is more imitation than citation. Now, this way of inhabiting the classical tradition through imitation is an exact definition of classicism at a higher level, as André Gide illustrated in the famous speech he gave at the beginning of the last century, in which he extolled the virtues of imitation, and not invention, as a desirable source of renewal in art.8 Richter cites this reference to classicism more and more often himself.9 Since 1988, he himself has even interpreted the doubt that has always been central to his work as a further sign of his closeness to the masters,10 a fact that has clearly distinguished him from his contemporaries since the late eighties, but that has actually always been at the heart of his work. Richter wants to create — to continue to paint — but to paint nothing new, nothing that might resemble the modern utopia of the new. Put simply, while for his Neo-Dada, performer, Pop Art or Flux contemporaries this “nothing” overflows out of painting, and specifically even works against it, with Richter this often melancholy and even desperate critical approach develops inside the pictorial field, and its aim is to celebrate painting.

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Richter has succeeded in building an immense corpus of work, much of which is not based on the invention of subject matter, but rather on different modes of reproduction — the complete or partial reproduction of photographs, for example, or of the work of others, of his own work — through internal reflexivity, a doubling of images, mirror effects. What the abstract paintings, no matter when they were created, have in common with the photo-paintings is this “freeze frame” process in which the person that fixes or freezes a state of being, even at the risk of destroying it (the photographer) takes precedence over the person that had created it (the painter). This can take the form of fixing a photograph of a painting in paint (the Soft Abstracts of the 1970s), stopping the superposition of pictorial elements floating in the tri-dimensional space of the photograph (the Free Abstracts on the 1980s) or the superposition of the coloured veils covering the abstract “scraper” paintings of 1990-2000. This is so true that what we see in the recent abstract paintings looks like the “before” state of a painting whose “after” we cannot help but imagine. This “before and after” or “front and back” polarity, which is also that of the short duration of photography (the frozen image) and the long duration of painting (the constructed image), is profoundly central in Richter’s work. In other words, photography, as reproduction or frozen image, functions as much outside the work as an iconographic source (in the photo-paintings ), as inside it as the driving force behind its appearance (in the abstractions). And in both the abstract works and the figurative ones, we often find evidence of a doubling, both a resemblance and a visible difference, between the image and its photographic reproduction.It would seem, then, that the photographic period simply served to help Richter produce work that would be duplicable, and whose unique character would be profoundly, irrevocably in doubt. And as we have seen, it is this same doubt that enables the artist to position himself in the tradition of his masters and in a long history of painting. “I don’t believe in this idea of the absolute painting. There can only be approaches, repeated attempts, research.”11

1 On the edges of the naked glass panels are real mirrors, but also glass that has been painted on top and below, or that has been coloured, set in metal

structures, framed, or even fixed by different kinds of metal bars. Hubertus Butin describes this complexity in “Gerhard Richter and the Reflection on

Images,” Butin 2004, p.19-23.

2 Gerhard Richter, “Interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, 1993,” Richter 1999, p.217.

3 See Mark Godfrey’s contribution to this book, p.81-82.

4 His abstract work is punctuated by these diptychs, true or suggested: CR: 492-5 and Clouds (CR: 514-1), Garden (CR: 515) and Lilies (CR: 516), true diptychs,

dating from 1982; S.D.I. (CR: 596; 1985-1986) and Mediation (CR: 617; 1986) which are false diptychs; St James, Andrew, Bridget and John (1988) as well as

CR: 636 (1987) show how an internal rhythm can be created; CR: 702 et CR: 726-727 explore the tension that exists between the continuity of the “scraper”

technique and the division of the canvas.

5 Pairs whose title designates them as such: versions 1 and 2 of Station (1985), for example; Victoria, Claudius and Courbet (1986), Flint Tower and Salt Tower

(1988).

6 These titles are different but similar; the symmetry or parity is suggested more by a similarity of composition and size: in 1983, Juno and Janus, Eduard and

Léon; Pforte and Pfad.

7 Indeed, these pairs are further multiplied, with two works for each of the following titles: Reader (CR: 799-1 and 804) and Flowers (CR: 815-2 and 3), Tulips

(CR: 825-1 and 2), Jerusalem (CR: 835-1 and 2), Self-portrait (CR: 836-1 and 2), Waterfall (CR: 847-1 and 2), Marine (CR: 852-1 and 2), Farm and Snow (CR:

861-1 and 2), etc., all the way to House in Forest (CR: 890-1 and 891-1).

8 André Gide, De l’influence en littérature (speech, Salon de la libre esthétique de Bruxelles, 29 March 1900), Paris, Allia, 2010 [new edition].

9 Until the late 1980s, Richter talked about his relationship to history in the third person: “Romanticism is far from being a closed book […]. We still need

these paintings.” “Interview with Irmeline Lebeer, 1973,” Richter 2009, p. 82. “I am Goethe and Polke is Schiller; I’m the classical one.” “Interview with

Astrid Kasper, 2000,” Richter 2009, p. 368.

10 With regards to the masters, Richter says: “I believed that it was crucial to be able to paint like the masters, and I couldn’t do it.” “Interview with Jan

Thorn-Prikker about the “18 October 1977” cycle, 1989” Richter 1999, p. 165. From this point on, he accepted the influence of certain painters, as well as

his inability to equal them.

11 Id., “Interview with Jan Thorn-Prikker…,” op.cit., p. 159.

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4. CONVERSATION BETWEEN GERHARD RICHTER

AND NICHOLAS SEROTA, SPRING 2011Nicholas Serota: Over fifty years, you have worked in sculpture, in drawing, in photographs, by painting over photographs, but you have always remained very loyal to painting. Of course you are known as a painter, but in the contemporary world such loyalty to painting is quite unusual. Gerhard Richter: A lot of people find other mediums more attractive – put a screen in a museum and nobody wants to look at the paintings any more. But painting is my profession, because it has always been the thing that interested me most. And now I’m of a certain age, I come from a different tradition and, in any case, I can’t do anything else. I’m still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.

NS: You sometimes describe yourself as a classical painter.GR: I’m never really sure what that word means, but however inaccurately I use it, ‘classical’ was always my ideal, as long as I can remember, and something of that has always stayed with me, to this day. Of course, there were difficulties, because in comparison to my ideal, I didn’t even come close. And some of my paintings reflect exactly this problem. For example, the Titian series (p.111): really I just wanted to have this lovely picture, that’s to say, paint it for myself from a postcard. That didn’t work, and so we now have these five pictures as a record of my defeat. It’s the same with the grey monochromes and the Colour Charts, where the different colours are randomly placed – the starting point, the source of paintings like that always has something to do with helplessness. And if they do turn out all right, then it’s only because I have set out the problem as clearly as possible, and have found the appropriate form for it.

NS: […] . But how do you begin a painting?GR: Sometimes I am lucky, and have the idea ‘this could be a painting’.

NS: From looking at an image?GR: Yes, in the case of the realistic paintings, either I see it in reality, and take a picture of it, or a photograph in my collection jumps out at me, from all the others. It can sometimes take years before I actually paint it.In the case of the abstractions, I get vague notions of pictures that are just asking to be painted. That’s how it starts, but nearly always the result is not at all what I imagined.

NS: So the painting begins with the very old craft of putting paint on canvas with a small brush …GR: A fresh start like that is a kind of ritual, with its own order, mixing the colours, finding the right hues, the smell, all these things foster the illusion that this is going to be a wonderful painting. And then that moment of defeat, when I see that it’s just not working. That’s what’s going to happen here. Tomorrow I’ll try again.

NS: Do you often abandon abstract paintings? GR: Yes, I alter them much more often than the representational ones. They often turn out completely different to what I’d planned.

NS: So you begin with an idea in your head about a feeling you want to create in a particular painting? How do you begin the abstract paintings? GR: Well, the beginning is actually quite easy, because I can still be quite free about the way I handle things – colours, shapes. And so a picture emerges that may look quite good for a while, so airy and colourful and new. But that will only last for a day at most, at which point it starts to look cheap and fake. And then the real work begins – changing, eradicating, starting again, and so on, until it’s done.

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NS: So, you begin with the decision to make a picture of a certain format? GR: Yes, a format, that seems right for the vague notion I have of the picture, and usually that does for a whole series of pictures.

NS: I think you once said that elegance is okay in science and mathematics, but not in art. Why is elegance a negative in art? GR: Mathematicians talk about elegant solutions. I like that. But it is usually to be found in the design world, elegant furniture and clothes. Although I don’t actually mind if people describe paintings as ‘elegant’ – after all, at least the grey panes I’ve made do have a very elegant aspect.

NS: So what is the purpose of art? GR: For surviving this world. One of many, many … like bread, like love.

NS: And what does it give you? GR: [laughs] Well, certainly something you can hold on to … it has the measure of all the infathomable, senseless things, the incessant ruthlessness of our world. And art shows us how to see things that are constructive and good, and to be an active part of that.

NS: So it gives a structure to the world?GR: Yes, comfort, hope, so it makes sense to be part of that.

NS: Are there subjects that you cannot paint? GR: Well, I don’t believe there are subjects that can’t be painted, but there are a lot of things that I personally can’t paint

NS: With September did you think about the possibility of making a painting on the subject in 2001 or did it come much later?GR: Four years later, actually. Although of course I was very struck by the images in the papers, I didn’t think you could paint that moment – and certainly not the way some people did, taking the inane view that this most awful act was some kind of an amazing Happening, and celebrating it as a mega work of art

NS: So you tried to find a way of dealing with the subject without making it spectacular? GR: Yes, concentrating on its incomprehensible cruelty, and its awful fascination

NS: When you are making the realistic paintings, do you have to be very precise? GR: Yes, in the widest sense of the word.

NS: What are you trying to achieve with these realistic images? GR: I’m trying to paint a picture of what I have seen and what moved me, as well as I can. That’s all.

NS: With a brush you have control. The paint goes on the brush and you make the mark. From experience you know exactly what will happen. With the squeegee you lose control.GR: Not all control, but some control. It depends on the angle, the pressure and the particular paint I am using.

NS: So do you like the possibility of having control, but also some things not under control? GR: Yes, that’s our job. Chance is given, unpredictable, chaotic, the basis. And we try to control that by intervening, giving form to chance, putting it to use.

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NS: I think you quoted with approval something that Cage said once: ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it.’ What is the spirit in Cage that you are close to? GR: Well, a sentiment like that is very close to my own reluctance to talk, and it also seems to me a very valid critique of all the many overblown statements we hear. But above all, in my view Cage is a very great musician. The way he handles chance, whether in his I Ching pieces, or other everyday noises. Even if it does at first sound like provocative nonsense, random tinklings and squeaks. But then you come to understand better and better how wonderfully clever and sensitive it is, how carefully it is constructed. Wonderful.

NS: I want to end by asking you why you have painted your family so frequently? GR: I know them best. [laughs]

NS: But it’s unusual. There are not many painters who have painted their families. GR: Perhaps I just took myself too seriously. [laughs] … It no doubt has to do with my own life story.

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5. CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE

1932 Gerhard Richter is born in Dresden to Hildegard Richter, a bookseller, and Horst Richter, a teacher.

1939–1945 At the outbreak of war, the family leaves Dresden to seek refuge in the countryside. Richter’s father and uncle join the Nationalist-Socialist party; his aunt, mentally unstable, is exterminated as a result of the Nazi eugenics programme. Richter himself is enrolled in an educational German youth programme.

1949 Creation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

1950–1956 Richter returns to Dresden which has been destroyed by bombing. He becomes a member of the Liberal Democratic party.

1961 Erection of the Berlin Wall. Richter and his wife flee to Düsseldorf in West Germany, where he enrols at the Academy of Fine Arts and meets Sigmar Polke, Blinky Palermo and Konrad Lueg. Takes classes under Karl Otto Götz.

1962 Begins his photo-paintings: paints Table from a photograph. All his previous paintings having been destroyed.

1964 Completes his course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf.

1965 Visits the Marcel Duchamp exhibition at the Haus Lange Museum in Krefeld.

1966 Begins painting grey monochromes and the Colour Charts. Birth of his daughter Babette, aka Betty.

1968 Creates the first series of Landscapes, following a trip to Corsica with his family. He goes on to paint Mountains and Seascapes, explicitly countering the legacy of German Romanticism. The series Townscapes depicts the German towns destroyed by American bombing during the Second World War.

1969 Creates Atlas, a repertoire of forms collating the artist’s sketches and drawings, together with all his photographs. Atlas, which now comprises over seven hundred plates, has been exhibited on several occa-sions as a compilation of Richter’s reflections on painting.

1971 Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf (until 1994). His students include Thomas Schütte, Ludger Gerdes, Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff.

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1972 Exclusive representative of the German Pavilion at the 36th Venice Biennial with 48 Portraits, Townscapes, three Clouds, Mountains and green abstract paintings. Takes part in Harald Szeemann’s documenta V in Kassel, in the “Photo-Realist Painting” section,.

1973–1976 Paints a series of five pictures inspired by Titian’s Annunciation, continues his large-format Colour Charts and Greys. Returns to his Seascapes and creates a new series, Tourist, and another inspired by artists Gilbert & George.

1977 Following their 192-day trial, the members of the far-left Red Army Faction were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. On 18 October the three group leaders were found dead in their cells. Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris featuring works dating mainly from the 1970s.

1980–1985 In the first half of the 1980s, his artistic practice straddles large acid-toned gestural abstractions and figurative paintings of skulls, candles and flowers, which are met with worldwide acclaim in the United States and all over the world.

1981 He and Ema divorce. Receives the Arnold Bode Prize in Kassel.

1982 Marries artist Isa Genzken. Shows his latest abstract canvases at documenta VII.

1983 Moves with Isa Genzken to Cologne, where he still lives today.

1988 Paints 18 October 1977, a cycle of fifteen pictures representing the deaths of the Red Army Faction leaders, and another portrait of his eldest daughter Betty.

1989 Adopts a darker chromatic palette and paints the monumental triptych November, December and January. Starts work on his overpainted photographs.

1990s Throughout this decade, he hones his squeegee technique, which soon becomes his ‘signature’.

1992 Takes part in documenta IX in Kassel

1993 Exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. He and Isa Genzken divorce.

1995 Marries Sabine Moritz, with whom he is to have three children: Ella, Moritz and Theodor. Paints the series S. with Child, dedicated to his new wife and their first child.

1997 Wins Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennial. Takes part in documenta X in Kassel with Atlas.

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1999 Uses aluminium supports for his works for the first time. Hangs his piece Black, Red, Gold in the entrance hall of the Reichstag in Berlin.

2001 Takes part in 49th Venice Biennial with his series Rhombus.

2002 Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, curated by Robert Storr

2005 Paints September depicting the attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

2007 Completes the stained glass window of Cologne Cathedral. Presents his final series of monumental abstractions, Cage, at the 52nd Venice Biennial.

2008–2010 Begins series of small enamels under glass and completes his last bouquet.

2011 New series, Strip (p. 55), composed of large digital prints made up of parallel lines.

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6. PUBLICATIONS

CATALOGUEGerhard Richter. PanoramaFrench edition directed by Camille Morineau24 x 32 cm. 304 p., 300 ill. colour. €44.90

The Centre Pompidou is dedicating a major retrospective to the artist, which will unite more than 300 works and will be the cultural event of summer 2012. For this event, the Centre Pompidou will be publishing a reference work without parallel on the market: more than 300 reproductions, an exclusive interview with the artist and contributions from major art historians and specialists on Richter’s work.

An English version of this catalogue, under the direction of Mark Godfrey and Nicholas Serota, together with a German version, under the direction of Dorothée Brill, have also been published.

ALBUMGerhard Richter. PanoramaBy Camille Morineau and Lucia PesapaneBilingual French/English27 x 27 cm. 60 p., 60 ill. colour. € 8.90

A journey in images through the retrospective: a selection of major works with short explanatory texts.

MOTIFSGerhard RichterA co-production by Editions du Centre Pompidou, Heni Publishing and Walther König21 x 14 cm492 p., € 29,90

Published to celebrate the Paris stage of this retrospective, this stunning art-object book is based on the most recent series of works by the artist, which are presented during the exhibition.The work opens with a decorative motif, which is then simplified until a superimposition of lines is obtained. The book is composed of a succession of images that immerse the reader in the artist’s universe, enabling the appreciation of his creative approach.

GERHARD RICHTER IPAD APPLICATIONThe Gerhard Richter application offers a selection of the most significant work of the artist during the Panorama retrospective. Each of the 60 works selected has his own description. The application contains also five interviews of the curator of the exhibition, Camille Morineau. Thanks to this application, the works can be selected and shared on all social networks.

Achim Borchardt-HumeDorothée BrillMark GodfreyRachel Haidu

Christine MehringCamille MorineauNicholas Serota

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6. LIST OF WORKS PRESENTED

01/PAINTING PHOTOGRAPHY

Bombers [Bomber) 1963Oil on canvas130 × 180Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg

Brigid Polk 1971Oil on canvas125 × 150Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt

Dead [Tote] 1963Oil on canvas100 × 150Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust

Egyptian Landscape [Ägyptische Landschaft] 1964Oil on canvas150 × 165Private collection Courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Ferrari 1964Oil on canvas145 × 200Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, Sid W. Richardson Foundation Endowment Fund

Folding Dryer [Faltbarer Trockner] 1962Oil on canvas105 × 170Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart

Mustang Squadron [Mustang-Staffel] 1964Oil on canvas88 × 150Private collection

Nose [Nase) 1962Oil on canvas78 × 60 cmCollection Corinne Michaela Flick, London

Negroes (Nuba) [Neger (Nuba)] (CR:45)1964Oil on canvas145 × 200Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Stool in Profile [Stuhl im Profil] 1965Oil on canvas90 × 70Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Tiger 1965Oil on canvas140 × 150Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen

Table [Tisch] 1962Oil on canvas90 × 113Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, long-term loan from a private collection, New York

Toilet Paper Roll [Klorolle] 1965Oil on canvas55 × 40Private collection

Woman with Child (Beach) [Frau mit Kind (Strand)] 1965Oil on canvas130 × 110Private collection

02/INHERITING A TRADITION

4 Panes of Glasses [ 4 Glasscheiben]1967Glass and Iron190 x 100 cm eachHerbert Foundation

Annunciation after Titian [Verkündigung nach Tizian] (CR:343-1)1973Oil on linen125 × 200Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Pur-chase Fund, 1994

Cloud [Wolke] 1970Oil on canvas200 × 300National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 1973



Ema (Nude on a Staircase) [Ema (Akt auf einer Treppe)] 1966Oil on canvas200 × 130Museum Ludwig, Cologne/Ludwig Bequest

Seascape (Cloudy) [Seestück (bewölkt)] 1969Oil on canvas200 × 200Private collection, Berlin

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Seascape (Sea-Sea) [Seestück (See-See)] 1970Oil on canvas200 × 200Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

Study for Clouds (Abstract) [Wolkenstudie (Abstrakt)] 1970Oil on canvas100 × 80Private collection

03/OPPOSING THE MOTIF

1024 Colors [1024 Farben]1973Oil on canvas254 x 478Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne

Detail (Brown) [Ausschnitt (braun)] 1970Oil on canvas135 × 150Museum Folkwang, Essen

Detail (Red-blue) [Ausschnitt (rot-blau)] 1970Oil on canvas200 × 300Private collection

Six Colours [Sechs Farben] (CR:142)1966Enamel on canvas200 × 170Private collection, Berlin

Townscape M2 [Stadtbild M2] 1968Oil on canvas85 × 90Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Loan of Frankfurter Sparkasse

Townscape Paris [Stadtbild Paris] (CR:175)1968Oil on canvas200 × 200Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart

Townscape PX [Stadtbild PX] (CR:174-3)1968Oil on canvas102 × 92Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München - Pi-nakothek der Moderne -Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds Collection Prinz Franz von Bayern

04/RELEASING ABSTRACTION

Glenn (CR:532)1983Oil on canvas190 × 500Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole

June [Juni] (CR:527)1983Oil on canvas250 × 250Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris

Red-Blue-Yellow [Rot-Blau-Gelb] (CR:335-4)1973Oil on canvas200 × 200Collection de L’Institut d’art contemporain, Rhône-Alpes

Red-Blue-Yellow [Rot-Blau-Gelb] (CR:339-1)1973Oil on canvas98 × 92Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

Yellow-green [Gelbgrün] (CR:492)1982Oil on canvas260 × 400Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

05/REVEALING CHANCE

Abstract Painting [Abstraktes Bild] 1987Oil on canvas300 × 300Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart

Abstract Painting [Abstraktes Bild] 1992Oil on aluminium100 × 100Private collectionp.216

Abstract Painting [Abstraktes Bild] 1992Oil on canvas200 × 140Kunstmuseum Winterthurp.217

Abstract Painting [Abstraktes Bild] 1983Oil on canvas70 × 50Sprengel Museum Hannover, on loan from a private collection

Forest (3) [Wald (3)] 1990Oil on canvas340 × 260Private collection

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Abstract Painting [Abstraktes Bild] 1997Oil on canvas260 × 340High Museum of Art, Atlanta Georgia; purchase with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton Sr, and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable. A.B. St John 1988Oil on canvas200 × 260 Tate. Presented by the Patrons of New Art through the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1988

Blanket [Decke] 1988Oil on canvas200 × 140Private collection, Berlin

06/SEEING THROUGH: GREY AND GLASS

11 Panes [11 Scheiben] 2004Glass290 × 212 × 54ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assis-tance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

Alps II [Alpen II] 1968Oil on canvas200 × 450Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Collection Ströher

Ball III [Kugel III] 1992Stainless-steel sphere with matte finishdiameter 16Private collection

Grey Streaks [Grauschlieren] 1968Oil on canvas200 × 200Private collection

Grey Beams [Graue Strahlen] 1968Oil on canvas50 × 40De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg

Coloured Grey [Bunt auf Grau] 1968Oil on canvas50 × 50Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

Untitled (Stroke) [Ohne Titel (Strich)] 1968Oil on canvas80 × 40Collection Elisabeth and Gerhard Sohst at Hamburger Kunsthalle

Grey [Grau] 1973Oil on canvas90 × 65Private collection

Grey [Grau] 1973Oil on canvas300 × 250Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, ParisDouble Pane of Glass [Doppelglasscheibe] 1977Glass, iron, painted in grey on one side200 × 150 × 50Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Roche-chouart

Mirror [Spiegel] 1981Mirror225 × 318Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

Curtain III (Light) [Vorhang III (hell)] 1965Oil on canvas200 × 195Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

Shadow Picture [Schattenbild]1968Oil on canvas67 × 87Coll. Fundação de Serralves – Contemporary Art Mu-seum, Porto, Portugal

Stroke (on Red) [Strich (auf Rot)] 1980Oil on canvas190 × 2000Private collection

Grey on back of glass [Grau hinter Glas] 2002Oil on glass 121.4 × 91.4Private collection

Silicate [Silikat] 2003Oil on canvas290 × 290Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

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07/RETHINKING CLASSICISM

Bühler Höhe 1991Oil on canvas52 × 72Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

Chinon 1987Oil on canvas200 × 320Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris

Iceberg in Mist [Eisberg im Nebel] 1982Oil on canvas70 × 100The Fisher Collection, San Francisco

Jerusalem 1995Oil on canvas126 × 92Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

Krems 1986Oil on canvas72 × 102Private collection, Berlin

Meadowland [Wiesental] 1985Oil on canvas90 × 95The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, Betsy Babcock, and Mrs. Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson Funds, 1985

Sketch [Skizze] 1991Oil on canvas52 × 62Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

Venice [Venedig] 1986Oil on canvas86 × 121Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden



Farm [Gehöft] 1999Oil on canvas46 × 51Private collection

Waldhaus 2004Oil on canvas142 × 98Private collection

08/REVEALING INTIMACY

Aunt Marianne [Tante Marianne] 1965Oil on canvas120 × 130Yageo Foundation, Taiwan

Betty 1977Oil on wood30 × 40Museum Ludwig, Cologne/private collection

Betty 1988Oil on canvas102 × 72Saint Louis Art Museum. Funds given by Mr and Mrs R. Crosby Kemper Jr through the Crosby Kemper Founda-tions, The Arthur and Helen Baer Charitable Foundation, Mr and Mrs Van-Lear Black III, Anabeth Calkins and John Weil, Mrs and Mrs Gary Wolff, the Honorable and Mrs Thomas F. Eagleton. Museum Purchase Dr and Mrs Harold J. Joseph, and Mrs Edward Mallinckrodt, by exchange.

Flowers [Blumen] 1994Oil on canvas71 × 51Carré d’Art, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes

Bouquet 2009Oil on canvas60 × 88.5Private collection

Court Chapel, Dresden [Hofkirche, Dresden] 2000Oil on canvas80 × 93Bettina and Donald L. Bryant Jr Collection

Ella 2007Oil on canvas40 × 31Private collection

Flowers [Blumen] 1977Oil on canvas40 × 50Private collection

Horst with Dog [Horst mit Hund] 1965Oil on canvas80 × 60Private collection

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Lilies [Lilien] 2000Oil on canvas68 × 80National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2002

Reader [Lesende] 1994Oil on canvas72 × 102San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Purchase through the gifts of Mimi and Peter Haas and Helen and Charles Schwab, and the Accessions Committee Fund: Barbara and Gerson Bakar, Collectors Forum, Evelyn D. Haas, Elaine McKeon, Byron R. Meyer, Modern Art Council, Christine and Michael Murray, Nancy and Steven Oliver, Leanne B. Roberts, Madeleine H. Russell, Danielle and Brooks Waler, Jr, Phyllis Wattis, and Pat and Bill Wilson

S. with Child [S. mit Kind] 1995Oil on canvas36 × 41Hamburger Kunsthalle, Permanent loan of Stiftung für die Hamburger Kunstsammlungen

S. with Child [S. mit Kind] 1995Oil on canvas41 × 36Hamburger Kunsthalle



S. with Child [S. mit Kind] 1995Oil on canvas61 × 51Hamburger Kunsthalle, Permanent loan of Stiftung für die Hamburger Kunst-sammlungen

S. with Child [S. mit Kind]1995Oil on canvas62 × 72Hamburger Kunsthalle, Permanent loan of Stiftung für die Hamburger Kunst-sammlungen

S. with Child [S. mit Kind]1995Oil on canvas36 × 51 Hamburger Kunsthalle


Self-Portrait [Selbstportrait ] 1996Oil on canvas51 × 46Tatsumi Sato

Small Bather [Kl. Badende] 1994Oil on canvas51 × 36Private collection

Uncle Rudi 2000Cibachrome photograph fixed on Dibond plate, framed, behind glass87 × 50Private collection

09/18 OCTOBER 1977

18 October 1977 [18 Oktober 1977]The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection, gift of Philip Johnson, and acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (all by ex-change); Enid A. Haupt Fund; Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest Fund; and gift of Emily Rauh Pulitzer, 1995

Comprising of:

Dead [Tote] 1988Oil on canvas62 × 67



Hanged [Erhängte] 1988Oil on canvas200 × 140

Man Shot Down 1 [Erschossener 1] 1988Oil on canvas100 × 140

Man Shot Down 2 [Erschossener 2] 1988Oil on canvas100 × 140

Cell [Zelle] 1988Oil on canvas200 × 140

Confrontation 1 [Gegenüberstellung 1] 1988Oil on canvas112 × 102

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Youth Portrait [Jugendbildnis] 1988Oil on canvas67 × 62

Record Player [Plattenspieler] 1988Oil on canvas62 × 83

Funeral [Beerdigung] 1988Oil on canvas200 × 320

Arrest 1 [Festnahme 1] 1988Oil on canvas92 × 126

Arrest 2 [Festnahme 2] 1988Oil on canvas92 × 126

10/CONTINUING TO PAINT

Abstract Painting [Abstraktes Bild] 1999Oil on Aludibond50 × 72Private collection







Abstract Painting [Abstraktes Bild] 1999Oil on canvas51 × 47Private collection

Abstract Painting [Abstraktes Bild] 1999Oil on canvas51 × 56Tamaki and Kiyoshi Wako

From Aladdin2010:Bagdad (CR:914-15) 37 × 50IFRIT (CR:915-20)33 × 43.5 IFRIT (CR:915-24)33 × 45IFRIT (CR 915-26) 35 × 50Private collection

Candle [Kerze] 1982Oil on canvas100 × 100Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

Skull [Schädel] 1983Oil on canvas55 × 50Private collection Strip 2011Digital impression on paper200x440Private Collection

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11/CAGE WALL

Cage 1 2006Oil on canvas290 × 290 Tate. Lent from a private collection 2007p.268

Cage 2 2006Oil on canvas300 × 300Tate. Lent from a private collection 2007p.269





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9. USEFUL INFORMATION

Admission€11 - €13, depending on timeconcessions €9 - €10ticket valid the same day forthe Musée national d’art moderneand all exhibitions

Free for under-18sand members ofthe Centre Pompidou(holders of the annual pass

Buy on-line and print at homewww.centrepompidou.fr

MATISSE, PAIRES ET SÉRIES UNTIL 18 JUNE 2012 press officer Céline Janvier 01 44 78 49 87 [email protected]

ANRI SALA2 MAY – 6 AUGUST 2012press officer Thomas [email protected]

MULTIVERSITÉS CRÉATIVES2 MAY – 6 AUGUST 2012press officer Anne-Marie [email protected]

PORTRAITS DE FAMILLE16 JUNE - 24 SEPTEMBER 2012press officer Anne-Marie [email protected]

LA TENDENZAARCHITECTURES ITALIENNES 1965-198520 JUNE - 10 SEPTEMBER 2012press officer Anne-Marie [email protected]

ON AIRSTUDIO 13/1621 JUNE - 2 SEPTEMBER 2012press officer Thomas [email protected]

Camille Morineauconservator at the Musée national d’art moderne,

assisted by Lucia Pesapane

Centre Pompidou75191 Paris cedex 04telephone00 33 (0)1 44 78 12 33métroHôtel de Ville, Rambuteau

Opening11am – 9pm every day,ex. Tuesdays and 1 May

PRACTICAL INFORMATION AT THE SAME TIME AT THE CENTRE CURATORS

gerhard richter - pompidou centre - press pack

Documents

verkndigung

canvas200

private collection

basic human

centre pompidou

camille morineau

nicholas serota

canvas300