Edited by Gaia Calcagni Merlini
Panorama is at Tate Modern London until 8 January 2012.
(Gerhard Richter, Reader 1994 Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art © Gerhard Richter)
Tate Modern presents an impressive and ambitious overview of five decades of Gerhard Richter’s work.
As first stage of an itinerary that will continue in Berlin and Paris, and coinciding with the artist’s 80th birthday, Panorama is collaborating to celebrate him as the greatest living artist.
Besides a chronological order, each of 14 rooms has a precise concern; from his early blurry photo paintings produced after leaving east Germany in 1960, to his communication with Duchamp’s work,to his damaged landscapes and colours charts to the moment in which figuration of photography meets abstraction of his painting at the end of 1970s.
Richter has continued to respond to significant moments in history throughout his career as he did fifty years ago reflecting on the history of National socialism, painting from his personal photographs of his family members who had been members,as well as victims, of the Nazy party till the painting of the terroristic attacks of 2001.
Final room shows his ‘Cage paintings’ from 2006, painted while listening to the music of John Cage and completed in 2006.
The range is astonishing and his work is stunning because the use of every tecnique with such refinement.
(Gerhard Richter, Candle 1982 Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden © Gerhard Richter)
(Gerhard Richter, Lilies [Lilien] 2000 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa © Gerhard Richter)
