Gerhard Richter: Painting as Mirror

Catalogue accompanying the exhibition Gerhard Richter. Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, neue Bilder at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld (April 9–June 18, 2000).

Although throughout his career Richter has always worked in the two seemingly contrasting realms of pure abstraction and photorealism they have turned out to be complementary aspects of his vision. This inter-relation of media is especially evident in the series of paintings completed in 1999 and is brought together in this publication. Having always been a strong believer in the power of painting this series of work documents his rediscovery of this powerful and for himself unavoidable force of self-expression. The images range from abstract, expressionistic shapes, to landscapes, to portraits without losing the underlying loyalty to aesthetic beauty. Adding to the reproductions there is a perceptive text by Julian Heynen to complete this publication.

This catalogue raisonné records Richter’s works in the years 1993-2004.

In his work, Gerhard Richter calls into question painting's boundaries, and the labels applied to painting and theories connected with them. In his pictures based on photographs - blurred overpaintings, grey paintings, and landscape and abstract compositions - he makes clear that nothing perceived by our senses can ever be found in a picture. The outer world is not portrayable and the inner one resists any comparison. While his painted works based on photographs illustrate painting's superiority, his glass works - glass panes, paintings on glass, mirrors and sculptures - question the interaction of viewer and picture and, like the paintings, offer a window onto the world. This publication takes account of all the important stages of Richter's oeuvre.