Gerhard Richter: Lines which do not exist

This catalogue raisonné of Gerhard Richter's drawings encompasses works in pencil, India ink, ballpoint pen, and other drawing media, on both paper and canvas since 1964. This comprehensive survey presents more than 400 drawings, each with descriptive captions and background text, as well as essays by Dieter Schwarz and Birgit Pelzer that investigate this crucial component of one of the 20th century's most celebrated painters.

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.