From October 17, 2025, to March 2, 2026, the Fondation Louis Vuitton will host a sweeping survey of Gerhard Richter’s work—the first to fully span his six-decade career. Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter escaped East Germany in 1961, settling first in Düsseldorf before making Cologne his permanent home. Richter stands among the most influential artists of our time.
This exhibition continues the Fondation’s commitment to spotlighting defining artists of the modern era, following shows dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Hockney.
Occupying every gallery in the building, the retrospective brings together 270 works—oil paintings, sculptures in glass and steel, drawings, watercolours, and overpainted photographs—from 1962 to 2024. It’s the first exhibition to trace Richter’s entire evolution, including his decision in 2017 to cease painting while continuing to draw.
Richter’s practice defies easy classification. Trained at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, he engaged early on with traditional genres—still life, portraiture, landscape—only to reinvent them. He never works directly from life; instead, his images emerge from photographs or sketches, transformed into something entirely new. Over the years, he has utilised brushes, palette knives, and even squeegees, testing the limits of painting. The exhibition is chronologically ordered, each section marking a distinct phase in Richter’s career:
Gallery 1: 1962–1970
Richter draws heavily on photographs, both ordinary and deeply personal. Newspaper cuttings, family pictures, and nostalgic images of Bomber planes intertwine, echoing Germany’s complex past. By the mid-1960s, he was already upending expectations with pieces such as “Four Panes of Glass” and his “Colour Charts.”
Gallery 4: 1976–1986
This decade saw Richter deepen his abstract experiments, scaling up watercolour studies and isolating brushstrokes as subjects (Strich). Yet he also returned to figuration, painting intimate portraits of his daughter Betty alongside landscapes and still lifes.
Gallery 5: 1987–1995
A darker tone emerges. The October 18, 1977 series—on rare loan from MoMA—confronts Germany’s political unrest, while abstract works from this period feel especially sombre. The Sabine mit Kind paintings revisit themes from his early family portraits.
Galleries 7 & 9: 1996–2009
Richter embraced chance, producing the Silikat series, the sprawling 4900 Colours, and the Cage Paintings—a nod to composer John Cage.
Galleries 9 & 10: 2009–2023
After a hiatus from painting, Richter turned to glass and digital Strip images before returning with Birkenau, a harrowing response to Holocaust photographs. The final room holds his last abstract works, a testament to his enduring innovation.
Interspersed throughout are sculptures and rooms devoted to works on paper, offering quieter moments amid the chronological journey.
Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter fled East Germany just before the Berlin Wall’s construction. After studying in Düsseldorf under K.O. Götz, he began developing his singular approach, blending photorealism with abstraction. His work has been exhibited globally, with major retrospectives in Paris (1999 at the Musée d’Art Moderne and 2012 at the Centre Pompidou).
Curated by Dieter Schwarz and Nicholas Serota
Top Photo: © PC Robinson at Artlyst