A new exhibition of works by one of Germany’s most famous living artists, Gerhard Richter, opened on Friday at the Neue Nationalgalerie museum in Berlin.
“Gerhard Richter. 100 works for Berlin” shows the long-term loan of the artist’s foundation for the first time. At the heart of the exhibition is Richter’s 2014 “Birkenau” series, the result of the artist’s decades-long engagement with Germany’s Nazi past and the Holocaust.
The four large canvases of the Birkenau series are abstract paintings with many gray and black surfaces, but also some red and green dashes.
The basis of the paintings are four photos secretly taken in 1944 by Jewish prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, who risked their lives to do this. Richter transferred the four photographs with charcoal and oil to the canvas and then gradually painted over them with oil paints until their contents were no longer visible.
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Richter’s process of abstraction was based on his belief that he could not do justice to the incomprehensible horror of the Holocaust with direct representation.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis and their henchmen murdered 6 million European Jews.
In the gallery in front of the Birkenau paintings is a large mirror which reflects not only the four works, but also the visitors who thus become part of the installation.
A woman walks past paintings by Birkenau at a new exhibition of artworks created by Gerhard Richter at the Neue Nationalgalerie museum in Berlin, Germany, March 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
“I think that’s what makes this work so central and so intense, that you as a visitor are really questioned about your responsibility during the time of the Nazis and your position on the Holocaust,” said Maike Steinkamp, the exhibition curator .
“Richter doesn’t give us an analysis, but allows us as viewers to form our own opinion,” Steinkamp added.
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Richter, who is 91, lives in the western city of Cologne. His oeuvre spans six decades in which he repeatedly explored the possibilities and limits of painting, as well as the tension between abstraction and figuration.
In 2021, the Gerhard Richter Foundation has committed a total of 100 works of art to the Nationalgalerie collection as a permanent loan which will be transferred to the Museum of the 20th Century which is currently under construction next door and is due for completion in 2026.
“We are building a special long-term loan exhibition room for Gerhard Richter in the new building,” said Klaus Biesenbach, director of the Neue Nationalgalerie.
Biesenbach added that the current gallery is “a little smaller than it will be in the new building, but is just as complex and multifaceted.”
Until the new museum opens, the works will be presented at the Neue Nationalgalerie. Not all 100 will be displayed at the same time, they will be rotated.
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Alongside the “Birkenau” series, there are currently many other works from various stages of Richter’s career, including a large group of overpainted photographs.
There is also “4900 Colours” from 2007, which is made up of 196 individual square panels, each of which is subdivided into 25 colored squares.
The exhibition was created in close collaboration with the artist, the museum said.
