This highly anticipated catalogue, accompanying Gerhard Richter’s first exhibition with David Zwirner, presents Richter’s last paintings along with his recent explorations in drawing, printing, and sculpture.

“[His last paintings] can feel almost like exquisite texts to be read. . . . Their freshness and spontaneity feels like a new beginning.” —Roberta Smith, The New York Times

Known for his abstract and realist paintings, Gerhard Richter has pursued a diverse and influential practice characterized by a decades-long commitment to the medium and its formal and conceptual possibilities. This remarkable book celebrates the breadth of Richter’s newest bodies of work and archives a historical moment in the artist’s career.

Full-color plates and installation views showcase a selection of the artist’s final works on canvas—made just before he announced his retirement from oil painting in 2017—alongside an expansive suite of new drawings made with ink, graphite, and colored pencil on paper, a remarkable series of chromatic inkjet prints titled mood, and a stunning glass sculpture that debuted at the exhibition in New York. A newly commissioned essay by Dieter Schwarz, one of the foremost experts on Richter’s oeuvre, illustrates the artist’s path toward his newest bodies of work. Schwarz describes Richter in his studio, revealing the creative process behind his iconic practice.

About The Authors

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) was born in Dresden, Germany. He studied art at the Dresden Hochschule für Bildende Künste from 1951 to 1956, with mural painting as his concentration. In 1959, he visited documenta II, held in Kassel, Germany, an experience that inspired him to alter his artistic trajectory. After his escape from East Germany in 1961, he completed a second course of study at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. There, he united with his fellow students Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg, and Manfred Kuttner to collectively form the short-lived “Capitalist Realism” group. Work by Richter is held in important public and private collections worldwide and was most recently included in major exhibitions at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Dieter Schwarz

Dieter Schwarz is a curator and writer. He has organized numerous exhibitions and contributed to publications on artists from early modernity to the present, including Pierre Bonnard, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman.

Product Details

Publisher: David Zwirner Books (November 21, 2023)
Length: 192 pages
ISBN13: 9781644231135

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Raves and Reviews

“His relentless drive to innovate and push the boundaries of abstraction is evident in the outstanding exhibition of Richter’s works at David Zwirner Gallery, serving as a firm testament to his enduring legacy”

– Whitewall

4 Star Review: “The strength and pleasure of Gerhard Richter’s work lies in its boundlessness, its variety, its sneakiness, its reliance on inner compulsion and intelligence.”

– Adrian Searle, The Guardian

“Still experimenting at 91, Gerhard Richter has brought the free-flowing colour of his large canvases to 100 artworks created for a new pocket-sized book. Created by photographing enamel paint poured over glass plates, these abstract pictures recall Victorian bookbinders’ marbled pages.”

– The Telegraph

“a vivid reminder of the painter's ongoing vitality”

“At Zwirner more than 70 recent drawings and inkjet prints were shown. By any measure, the paintings and drawings reflect a prodigious amount of work for an artist of any age. And they represent no diminution of talent or power”

– Tom Teicholz, Forbes

“His work seeks to continue to make great, even monumental art by working with rather than against the refuse heap of endlessly progressing technological civilization...For Richter, this is its own Romantic ruin or sublime landscape”

– John Ganz, Artforum