Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter by Sheena Wagstaff and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh is a lavishly illustrated monograph that spans the entire career of Gerhard Richter, one of the most celebrated contemporary artists.

This book spans the contemporary German artist's six-decade career and serves as a stirring exhibition in its own right. As cited by the New York Times, it “[s]pans the contemporary German artist's six-decade career. . . . [A] stirring exhibition in [its] own right.” The New York Review of Books also highlights it as a "[w]eighty catalogue... illuminat[es] some less-visited corners of Richter's oeuvre."

Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post–Second World War Germany, in both broad and very personal terms. This handsomely designed book features approximately 100 of his key canvases, from photo paintings created in the early 1960s to portraits and later large-scale abstract series, as well as select works in glass.

New essays by eminent scholars address a variety of themes:

• Sheena Wagstaff evaluates the conceptual import of the artist’s technique.
• Benjamin H. D. Buchloh discusses the poignant Birkenau paintings (2014).
• Peter Geimer explores the artist’s enduring interest in photographic imagery.
• Briony Fer looks at Richter’s family pictures against traditional painting genres and conventions.
• Brinda Kumar investigates the artist’s engagement with landscape as a site of memory.
• André Rottmann considers the impact of randomization and chance on Richter’s abstract works.
• Hal Foster examines the glass and mirror works.

As this book demonstrates, Richter’s rich and varied oeuvre is a testament to the continued relevance of painting in contemporary art.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Met Breuer, New York
(March 4–July 5, 2020)

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
(August 14, 2020–January 19, 2021)