Berlin museum presents 100 works by artist Gerhard Richter
A new show of works by one of Germany’s most famous living artists, Gerhard Richter, has opened at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie museum
BERLIN (AP) — A new show of works by one of Germany's most famous living artists, Gerhard Richter, opened at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie museum on Friday.
“Gerhard Richter. 100 Works for Berlin” shows for the first time the long-term loan from the artist's foundation. At the center of the exhibition is Richter's 2014 series “Birkenau,” 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 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, who risked their lives doing so. Richter transferred the four photographs with charcoal and oil onto the canvas and then gradually painted over them with oil paint until their content was no longer visible.
