Gerhard Richter. Truth in Semblance

For close to sixty years, a central role in Gerhard Richter’s life’s work, which he began (anew) in West Germany in 1961, has been played by the continuous erosion and blurring of the border between reality and illusion, by the expansion of boundaries, and by questions related to the representability of different “realities” and the capturing – and instantaneous dissipation – of the given moment. As Richter has, throughout his life, had direct experience of several different political, social, economic and cultural systems, his relationship with reality (or realities) can best be apprehended in terms of doubts, scepticism, transience, evanescence and fragility. The essence and power of his art emanate from his propensity to analyse and to question everything, and from his ensuing compulsion to keep moving forward, inexorably.

His uncategorisable, “style-less” painterly language, which entirely excludes the personal while remaining endlessly multi-layered, ranges from the figural to the abstract, from blurred, hazy images to sharp, glossy surfaces, from grey photo-paintings to vivid, polychromatic colour charts, from portraits to landscapes, from canvas to stained glass, and from the manual to the digital. With the so-called photo-paintings he made in the 1960s, he was the first to reflect on the unique relationship between photography and painting, and he resolved the prevailing conflict between the two. He makes masterful and conscious use of all the tools of modern painting and of the art of bygone ages, primarily from the painting of Titian, Vermeer, and Caspar David Friedrich. He experiments with the themes and forms explored by his forebears, while incessantly creating ever newer painterly universes that differ from each other to boundless extremes, doing so by eradicating himself from everything that has gone before, and by depriving the themes, the precedents and his own present time from all subjectivity. Gerhard Richter’s multifaceted work does not derive from a single self-contained and targeted artistic concept. It is rather an intricate fabric, often built up from consistent intentions, but sometimes composed from mutually contradictory ideas about the preconditions of painting and art. His constant search for new possibilities, his transgression of boundaries, and his commitment to avoiding predictability and obligatory doctrines tie Gerhard Richter to the most important artists of the twentieth century.

The exhibition concludes with a selection of sixty photographs by Benjamin Katz, showing Gerhard Richter working in his studio in Cologne.

The documentary film shown as part of the exhibition, entitled Gerhard Richter Painting provides insight into the artist’s working methods and his views on art. In the multiple award-winning film, viewers can glimpse inside the painter’s rarely seen studio, where Richter speaks about the essence of painting and about his conflicting relationship with the world outside his studio.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in Hungarian and English with studies by Hungarian and foreign authors. Another book relating to the selection of photographs accompanying the exhibition has also been published, with an interview at the request of the museum with the photographer Benjamin Katz. Both publications are available for purchase at the MuseumShop and online at the MuseumShop’s website.

The exhibition came about through close cooperation with the Gerhard Richter Archive in Dresden, with the artist, and the artist’s studio in Cologne.

The exhibition is realised with the collaboration and expertise of our partner, the Goethe-Institut Budapest.

Curator of the exhibition: Kinga Bódi, art historian

The Main Sponsor of the exhibition is Deutsche Bank.
Professional Cooperating Partner: Goethe Institut.
Our Cooperating Partners are: Porsche Hungaria and Zenit Hoteles.

The exhibition is air-conditioned, the temperature is around 21 °C.