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Distributed for Hirmer Publishers

Gerhard Richter

Images of an Era

With contributions by Hubertus Butin, Dietmar Elger, Dietmar Rübel, Uwe M. Schneede, and Ortrud Westheider

Distributed for Hirmer Publishers

Gerhard Richter

Images of an Era

With contributions by Hubertus Butin, Dietmar Elger, Dietmar Rübel, Uwe M. Schneede, and Ortrud Westheider

Among German painter Gerhard Richter’s best-known works are his large-scale paintings based on—and sometimes applied directly to—photographs. A transplant to West Germany mere months before the erection of the Berlin Wall, Richter sought to understand and represent his new environment through a series of paintings from black-and-white photos culled from newspapers, books, and magazines. These paintings marked a new phase in Richter’s remarkable career.

Providing new insight into these complex photo-derived works, Gerhard Richter: Images of an Era presents fifty of the artist’s works that cumulatively form an image of Richter’s Germany—its hopes and dreams, its new possibilities and memories of the oppressive past. Among the works included here are the fifteen controversial panels from the 18. Oktober 1977 series, which, painted from press photographs, depict moments in the lives and deaths of four imprisoned members of the Red Army Faction. Here, these paintings are newly interpreted within the context of Richter’s work. Rounding out the images are essays and commentary by leading experts, as well as a number of Richter’s hitherto unprinted letters, including a conversation between Richter and critic and curator Uwe M. Schneede.
 
While Richter earned critical praise throughout his career, it was his photo-paintings that earned him widespread international acclaim. Created to accompany an exhibition on loan at the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg, this volume celebrates these works that marked an unexpected revival of history painting in modern times.

216 pages | 167 color plates, 55 halftones | 8 3/4 x 11 | © 2011

Art: European Art


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Table of Contents

Preface
      Ortrud Westheider
Introduction
      Uwe M. Schneede

Gerhard Richter’s Images of an Era
      Uwe M. Schneede
“It is as it is”: Gerhard Richter’s Letters to Two Artists Friends
      With an Introduction by Dietmar Elger and annotations by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
The Painted Photo: Gerhard Richter in His Atelier
      Dietmar Elger
Atelier Photos 1965–66
      Uwe M. Schneede
Hero Worship and the Rejection of Ideology: Gerhard Richter’s 1966 Film Volker Bradke
      Hubertus Butin
Cut and Paint: Pictures from the Popular Press and the Photo Paintings of the 1960s
      Dietmar Rübel
On Pop, East and West, and Some of the Picture Sources
      Uwe M. Schneede in Conversation with Gerhard Richter
Painting 1962–67
Banality and the New Painting
People Killed and Ensnared
Illusions and Yearnings
Political Events
Friends and Family
October 18, 1977, 1988
An Idea Pursued to the Point of Death. The Cycle October 18, 1977
      Orturd Westheider
Annotated Catalog of the Exhibited Works
      Uwe M. Schneede

Biography
Selected Bibliography
The Writers
Colophon/Photo Credits

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