Gerhard Richter exhibition opened at the Pompidou Center in Paris

Gerhard Richter, one of the best-selling living artists in the world, presents an exhibition of his best works in Paris. The exposition, covering six decades of the author’s creative life, occupies the entire sixth floor of the Pompidou Center, and has 141 paintings.

Photo: Thibault Camus

A shortened version of the exhibition has already been presented in Berlin and London. The Paris version is complemented by masterpieces from the French National Archives. The entire series of exhibitions is dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the artist.

Gerhard Richter, who survived the Second World War, is famous for his attacks on the Nazi past of Germany. His work Uncle Rudy is widely known, for the creation of which the artist dressed his uncle in Nazi uniforms, as well as the psychologically heavy portrait of Aunt Marianne, with little Richter in her arms, depicting a woman shortly before her death in fascist camps.

The exhibition also features the famous series of eight monochrome works made in gray. The gray color for the artist is the absence of anything. The paintings were painted during a period of personal and professional uncertainty. In contrast to the “gray” series, the cycle “Releasing Abstraction” shows bursts of flowers on large canvases made after 1980. “Glen” and “June” are works taken from the French archives.

A separate place at the exhibition is occupied by a series of works depicting the artist’s wife with a newborn child. “I painted my family so often because it really affects me myself,” Richter said in an interview at the opening of the exhibition.

Anna Sidorova