It doesn’t seem like much of an overshoot to say that the Gerhard Richter is one of the most vital and preeminent artists of this era or any era. His success and influence is astounding. What I find interesting is that, even before the announcement of a showcase of the German artist’s works at David Zwirner in Paris would highlight the Basel week there and coincides with a major retrospective of Richter’s work curated by Nicholas Serota and Dieter Schwarz at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, I noticed a lot of artists talking about Richter again. Engaging with the work. Admiring not only the longevity of the career but the refusal to be just one thing and to explore the endless possibilities of painting and presentation.
I’ve always been a huge fan of oil figurative works of the 1990s and the dissolving, glitch works of the early 2000s. Even the new glass works that play with the idea of perspective and perception I find rather exciting and in connection with his career of exploring the ways we look. Janice Bretz and Kerstin Küster wrote that “Richter pushes the human faculty of sight to its physical limit.” This is exactly it.
Maybe why so many painters I love, a younger generation in an emerging state of their careers, is because he did so much with paint. Larry Bell and James Turrell could change immersive you and surround you with a visual experience of space and place, Kusama’s rooms take you to different dimensions, but those are experiences of physicality that Richter explores with paint. That is a beautiful and continuously fascinating practice.
One work in the Zwirner showcase, Blumen (Flowers), 1992, is a deceptively complex work, one of my favorites from Richter and happy to see it showcased here. Part of his enduring Fotobilder (Photo Paintings) series, I have always found this one to be one of his best, a quiet moment of skill and attention to the natural world in the work of an artist who pushes reality to the brink. It is in these instances where the appeal and influence seems to take its most intimate and immediate shape. —Evan Pricco
Gerhard Richter will be on view at David Zwirner Paris from October 20—December 20, 2025
