Gerhard Richter, one of the most celebrated illustrators working today, joins David Zwirner’s massive gallery, which has eight locations on three continents. The move would see Richter leave his longtime showrunner, Marian Goodman, who had represented him for more than 30 years.
Richter, who turns 90 this year, will premiere with David Zwirner next March in New York.
“I knew David from his childhood, having worked closely in the 1960s with his father, Rudolf Zwirner,” Richter said in a statement. “I feel like this is a beautiful continuity across the generations.”
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Richter’s paintings took many different forms, from icy hues to abstractions in dazzling colours. He has been credited with changing the course of painting and is considered a living legend in his native Germany. According to David Zwirner, Richter has appeared at Documenta, the respected frequent art fair in Kassel, more times than any other artist.
He first rose to fame in the 1960s with paintings that included portraits based on photographs, which he reproduced in steely black and white and slightly blurred. Some of these works uncomfortably evoked Germany’s recent past by evoking the specter of the Nazi Party, whose ranks included some members of the Richter family.
However, he is now better known for his abstractions, which are made using a doormat that Richter holds across his paintings. In doing so, he relinquishes control of what his paint will do when you move it around.
While Richter’s painting is conceptual and often rich with ideas, it has garnered cult followings around the world, and has even infiltrated popular culture, with a famous painting of a candle appearing on the cover of The beloved Sonic Youth album. His influence was huge, too, and art historian Benjamin H.D. Buchloh recently sought to survey every bit of Richter’s oeuvre in a long-awaited book finally released this year.
In the market, Richter’s paintings are also appreciated. At auction, they regularly sell for tens of millions of dollars. His record, recorded in 2015, is $46.3 million, making him one of the most expensive living artists.
In a statement, dealer David Zwirner said: “Being able to work with Gerhard Richter is a great honor and a great privilege. Richter has, without a doubt, created one of the most complex and aesthetically diverse works of art in the history of art. By avoiding adherence to any ideology or one creed, Richter managed to celebrate and subvert the very act of painting. In the process, he single-handedly opened the medium to entirely new possibilities and realizations.”
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