GERHARD RICHTER IS LOANING HIS HOLOCAUST WORKS- WHICH HE VOWED TO NEVER SELL - TO A NEW MUSEUM IN BERLIN
The loan of more than 100 works to the Museum of Modern Art includes the Birkenau series, the fruit of decades of work as an artistic response to the Holocaust.
"The four images of Birkenau, which I never wanted to put on the art market, were the reason for creating a foundation." - confessed the German artist. "I am glad that these pictures are coming to Berlin."
Produced in 2014, the four-part series Birkenau is inspired by the work of documentary photographs secretly taken by a Jewish prisoner in 1944 at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. "In autumn 2014, I began to transfer these images to canvas, and realised that it wasn’t working at all." Richter said. "It’s not unusual for me to start from the figurative and end up with something abstract." To this day, only subtle elements of the original figuration remain in the final work under the layers and layers of abstraction and expressionism.
The dark palette and fractures of the canvas reflect the artist's conscious struggle to understand the historical trauma of the document. This inner struggle, which is restricted in photography, is explicit here through the plastic abstraction. Therefore, Richter portrays the complex tension of observing and encompassing photographs and what they convey.
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Gerhard Richter's Birkenau series, 2014. Each: oil on canvas, 8 ft. 6 3/8 in. x 78 3/4 in. (260 x 200 cm).© Gerhard Richter 2020
Until October 3, the series is presented at the Alte Nationalgalerie in the company of the four original photographs. In addition, Birkenau was recently part of the Gerhard Richter retrospective "Painting after all" at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
According to its press release, the Gerhard Richter Foundation will soon sign the agreement with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), manager of the Berlin museums.
The loan, which will be made in 2023, includes works from different periods of the artist, ranging from Besetztes Haus (1989) to his most recent abstract works.
"The work of Gerhard Richter is unthinkable without the history of Germany" declared the current president of SPK, Hermann Parzinger. "His images offer a path to many of us to come to terms with the turbulence of the 20th century"
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Render of Museum der Moderne in Berlin. © Herzog & de Meuron.
Yesterday for the first time the Berlin's Museum Institutions opened after the second strict German quarantine that went into effect in November 2020.
With regard to the new building, Herzog & de Meuron's studio is the one in charge of constructing it. Next to the Neue Nationalgalerie designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the brand new building will be used to house the 20th century art collection of the current Neue Nationalgalerie. Once the building is finished, Richter will have his own reserved space next to exclusive rooms of works by Joseph Beuys, Rebecca Horn and Sarah Morris. Meanwhile, the loaned works will be exhibited in the adjoining museum.
It should be noted that due to production costs and architectural design, the new museum building is at least controversial for some German citizens. The budget committee of the Bundestag would have released federal funds of 364.2 million euros for this. Total costs are estimated at 450.2 million euros.
