Gerhard Richter, Venedig (Treppe) [Venise (escalier)], 1985 (CR 586-3)
The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Edlis Neeson Collection © Gerhard Richter 2025
Just like Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped objects and landscapes to make them more visible to us, Gerhard Richter’s fuzzy or scratched images ask us - demand us - to pay attention to the object, the model or the landscape in front of our eyes. The fuzzy images operate in a mysterious way: they penetrate deeply into our consciousness. We often don’t see clearly what’s in front of our eyes, but it is very difficult to move away from one of Gerhard Richter paintings. That’s their power over us.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton, in Paris, is celebrating Richter with his biggest retrospective simply titled “Gerhard Richter”. 270 paintings covering the entirety of his life, from the moment he moved to the West, in 1961, plus Richter’s “Atlases”, the albums where he collected thousands of images which would inspire him later, all the way to what the artist says are his last paintings. The 93 year old artist always painted from a photograph, never from real life or the observation of nature. On the top floor, a video shows Richter at work in his studio and his technique.
The exhibition moves chronologically from the bottom floor to the top. It is gently taking our hand to guide us through an extraordinary body of work. Suzanne Pagé, the Foundation’s artistic director says that Richter’s work, although very cerebral, very deliberate, “is also very moving”. One leaves the foundation deeply affected by the collection of works we have been exposed to.
Gerhard Richter, Tisch [Table], 1962 (CR 1) Collection particulière © Gerhard Richter 2025
Photography © Jennifer Bornstein
The exhibition starts with what Richter considers his first painting, “Tisch”, a table like a Rosetta stone. It contains everything that Gerhard Richter will develop over the years. The surface of the painting is brushed over, faded, it becomes a shadow of the object that has been projected over the canvas. Born in 1932 in Dresden, Richter dates the beginning of his life as an artist to when he left East Germany, just before the erection of the Berlin Wall, in the summer of 1962. He first started learning to paint as a teenager going to evening classes. After art school in Dresden, the young artist painted murals. It gave him more opportunities for work. His style was pure Socialist realism. When he moved West, he left everything behind - socialist realism and his parents whom he never saw again. In the West, seeing Jackson Pollock’s work was a revelation for the 30 year old raised under the eye of Stasi, the secret police.
Gerhard Richter, Onkel Rudi [Oncle Rudi], 1965 (CR 85). Collection Lidice Memorial, République Tchèque © Gerhard Richter 2025
Gerhard Richter starts over at Düsseldorf’s Kunstacademie. He starts working after press clippings he has found in newspapers. That’s where he’ll develop his style of brushing and fading and scraping over the images on the canvas. The object is in front of our eyes, but somehow it feels like an image we see in our sleep, in our unconscious mind. Making images that seem to be out of focus is a way to make them more universal, timeless. His first portraits are his uncle in his Wehrmacht uniform, his aunt who was executed in a concentration camp. Slowly he moves towards landscapes and the people he loves, like his wife Emma, later, his daughter Betty.
Gerhard Richter, Kerze [Bougie], 1982 (CR 511-1) Collection Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes © Gerhard Richter 2025
Each Foundation Vuitton floor is dedicated to about 10 to 15 years of the artist’s production. We move from the personal images to sublime landscapes to his Strips and his color charts, to the series called October 18, 1977, about the 4 members of the Red Army Fraction found dead in their prison cell in Germany. All the way to the top of the Foundation, a room is filled with what Richter says are his last paintings, Birkenau. They were painted from 4 photographs made secretly and under the threat of death for, in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, by men assigned to empty the gas chambers and burn the bodies. Richter worked for 2 years on this project, 4 grey and red large scale abstract canvases. “It was like an ancient debt that I had to repay,” said Richter. “I felt I was on a mission.” These canvases are the perfect punctuation for a life dedicated to painting. They close a cycle that started 63 years ago. As we look at these paintings and the 4 black and white photos that inspired them, we feel like starting the visit all over again, as if, after seeing Birkenau, we better understand the earlier images, the brushed canvases that we discovered as we entered the Foundation. We can see the arc of a long life dedicated to painting.
~Jean-Sébastien Stehli
“Gerhard Richter”, Fondation Louis Vuitton. fondationlouisvuitton.fr. Until March 2, 2026.
Also:
“Richter”. Zwirner Gallery Paris. davidzwirner.com. Until December 20.
And: Never Look Away, a 2 part film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck tells the story of Richter from his childhood until his new beginning in Düsseldord.
