The Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris has inaugurated a major retrospective dedicated to the highly influential German master, Gerhard Richter. Running from October 17, 2025, through March 2, 2026, the exhibition offers a profound exploration of the artist’s output, spanning more than six decades of his relentless quest for visual truths. The curatorial team, composed of Dieter Schwarz and Nicholas Serota, meticulously structured the narrative in strict chronological order, allowing visitors to trace the evolution of Richter’s singular artistic vision.
This exhibition boasts an unprecedented scope, featuring approximately 270 pieces created between 1962 and 2024. Viewers are presented with a diverse array of media, ranging from traditional oil paintings to sculptures crafted from glass and steel, alongside graphics, watercolors, and photographs that have been subjected to the artist's unique manipulation. This comprehensive survey firmly establishes Richter’s standing as a pivotal figure in global contemporary art, offering insight into his multifaceted legacy—a body of work that, by his own admission, is drawn entirely from dedicated studio practice.
A particularly significant section of the display is dedicated to the landmark cycle, “October 18, 1977,” which has been loaned specifically for this event by MoMA. This series, consisting of fifteen canvases completed in 1988, represents the sole instance in Richter's entire oeuvre where he directly references recent German history. Specifically, the works address the events surrounding the “German Autumn” and the activities of the radical left-wing Red Army Faction (RAF). The date cited in the cycle's title marks the day the bodies of Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader, and Jan-Karl Raspe were discovered in their prison cells at Stuttgart-Stammheim. The creation of these paintings generated considerable public controversy, underscoring just how divisive these historical events remained within German society.
Richter, who relocated from Dresden to Düsseldorf in 1961 and subsequently settled in Cologne where he continues to live and work today, consistently aimed to redefine traditional artistic genres—including still life, portraiture, landscape, and historical painting—through a contemporary lens. Crucially, he never works directly from life; every image is filtered through an intermediary source, such as a photograph or drawing, thereby transforming it into an autonomous artwork. The early galleries, covering the period from 1962 to 1970, illustrate how photography served as a springboard, where even personal family snapshots, like “Uncle Rudi” and “Aunt Marianne,” prompted meditations on both personal and national history. The artist continually pushed the boundaries of painting, employing signature techniques such as blurring (Vermalung) and the use of squeegees, while steadfastly avoiding any singular classification.
The event at the Louis Vuitton Foundation transcends a mere exhibition; it provides a unique opportunity to witness how an individual's experience, refracted through artistic mastery, functions as a mirror reflecting broader societal processes, thereby encouraging a deeper, more meaningful engagement with the displayed works and the historical contexts they embody.