Gerhard Richter returns to Paris with major David Zwirner exhibition

25 octobre 2025

Gerhard Richter returns to Paris with major David Zwirner exhibition

Installation view Gerhard Richter, David Zwiner, Paris, October 20—December 20, 2025. Courtesy David Zwirner.

PARIS.- David Zwirner opened an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and glass installations by renowned German artist Gerhard Richter at the gallery’s Paris location. This is the artist’s third show with David Zwirner since the announcement of his representation in 2023, following solo presentations at the gallery’s locations in New York (2023) and London (2024). The exhibition coincides with a major retrospective of Richter’s work curated by Nicholas Serota and Dieter Schwarz at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, opening on 17 October 2025.

Characterized by an impressive variation in scope, scale, and technique, the works on view at David Zwirner collectively highlight Richter’s expansive understanding of the painted medium and his endlessly investigative approach to the process of artmaking itself. In his Fotobilder (Photo Paintings)—such as Blumen (Flowers, 1992), Torso (1997), and Kl. Badende (Small Bather, 1994)—the artist employs his own photographs, as well as images found in newspapers, magazines, and advertisements, as a compositional basis. He often blurs or otherwise obfuscates the resultant imagery, thus complicating the relationship between painting and photography and presenting a conceptual experiment with the iterative translation and interplay of mediums.

Gerhard Richter, Blumen (Flowers), 1992. Oil on canvas, 41 x 61 cm. Courtesy David Zwirner © Gerhard Richter 2025

Gerhard Richter, Torso, 1997. Oil on Alucobond, 55 x 48 cm. Courtesy David Zwirner © Gerhard Richter 2025

Richter’s Abstrakte Bilder (Abstract Paintings) explore painting’s formal and conceptual possibilities from another angle. Carefully constructed and highly stratified in composition, these works use abstraction to foreground the sheer physical presence of paint and color—a method of artistic creation that is aleatory yet deliberately planned. On view are a pair of Abstract Paintings from 2001 that feature intersecting swaths of vibrant pink, green, and golden yellow. With their expansive planes of harmonious color, these works stand in contrast to Richter’s last oil paintings from 2015 to 2017, which are characterized by energetic markings laid atop one another in intricate, dimensional formations. These paintings are further juxtaposed in Paris with a four-meter-wide Strip painting from 2024; digitally derived from the Abstract Paintings, Richter’s Strips orchestrate a dialogue between painting, photography, print reproduction, and abstraction.

Also exhibited are recent drawings by Richter—including new works as well as ones that were featured in the exhibition Gerhard Richter: 81 Drawings, 1 Strip Painting, 1 Edition at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, earlier this year. Throughout the years, the medium of drawing has remained a fruitful and significant element of Richter’s practice. These works—often made with colored ink or graphite—allow him to explore another aspect of the role of the artist’s hand in the creation of a dynamic and abstract pictorial narrative.

Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting), 2006. Oil on silkscreen print on paper, 120 x 90 cm. Framed: 131.7 x 98 cm. Courtesy David Zwirner © Gerhard Richter 2025

Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting), 2001. Oil on Alu-Dibond, 70 x 70 cm. Courtesy David Zwirner © Gerhard Richter 2025

The exhibition in Paris features three wall-mounted glass installations of varying dimensions, as well as 3 Scheiben (3 Panes of Glass, 2023), which takes the form of three transparent, reflective glass panes that stand upright within a metal frame. Since 1967, with the creation of his landmark installation 4 Glasscheiben (4 Panes of Glass), Richter has maintained an analytical and wide-ranging fascination with glass, uniquely positioning the material as a literal reflection on painting and imagemaking rather than as a form of pure sculpture. The experience of beholding these works along with the images seen on their surfaces—enacts a radical paradox in which reality is both rendered impassable through its physical mirroring and distortion, while also being perfectly emulated with an indelible proximity to the real world. As Janice Bretz and Kerstin Küster note, in Richter’s glass works, “visitors are not spectators but creators, and they are confronted with the difference between the real exhibition space and the random reflection of reality in the glass.… It is an invitation from the artist to think about seeing and what is seen as one potential reality among many. Seeing is situational, and reality always depends on the viewer.”1

Gerhard Richter, 3 Scheiben (3 Panes of Glass), 2023. Glass and steel construction, three (3) panes of glass, 328 x 220.3 x 205.7 cm. Courtesy David Zwirner © Gerhard Richter 2025

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 main area of study. In 1959, he visited Documenta II, held in Kassel, West 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 fellow students Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg (later known as the gallerist Konrad Fischer), and Manfred Kuttner to collectively form the short-lived “capitalist realism” group.

From 1964 onward, Richter has had many solo exhibitions in renowned galleries and museums worldwide. The artist’s first solo exhibition in a public institution was held at the Gegenverkehr, Zentrum für aktuelle Kunst, in Aachen, West Germany, in 1969. In 1972, he was selected as the only artist to represent Germany in its national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Richter has exhibited at Documenta more times than any other artist (1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2007, and 2017).

Gerhard Richter, Strip (Strip), 2024. Digital print on paper between aluminum and Perspex (Diasec), 200 x 400 cm. Courtesy David Zwirner © Gerhard Richter 2025

Richter’s work has been presented in numerous solo shows and retrospective exhibitions at important institutions worldwide, including the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (1971, 1986); Kunsthalle Bremen, West Germany (1975); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1977, 2012); Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf (1986); Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (1986, 2012); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (1988, 2003); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1989, 2002); Tate, London (1991, 2011); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1993); Art Institute of Chicago (2002); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2002); Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2017); The Met Breuer, New York (2020); and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2022). In April 2023, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin opened Gerhard Richter: 100 Works for Berlin. This special long-term presentation features works that the Gerhard Richter Foundation gave to the museum on permanent loan in 2021, including Richter’s Birkenau (2014) cycle of large-scale abstract paintings.

Richter has been honored with a number of significant awards, among them the Kunstpreis Junger Westen, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, West Germany (1967); Arnold Bode-Preis, Kassel, West Germany (1982); Oskar-Kokoschka-Preis, Vienna (1985); Goslarer Kaiserring, Goslar, West Germany (1988); Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997); Praemium Imperiale Award, Japan Art Association, Tokyo (1997); Wexner Prize, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (1998); Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (1998); Staatspreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2000); and the Kunst- und Kulturpreis der deutschen Katholiken, Deutsche Bischofskonferenz, Bonn (2004). In 2007, Richter received honorary citizenship in Cologne, and in the same year, he designed a spectacular stained-glass window for the Cologne Cathedral.

David Zwirner began representing the artist in 2023. The same year, the gallery presented a solo exhibition in New York of new and recent abstract works by Richter. The presentation was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with a new essay by Dieter Schwarz. In early 2024, a solo exhibition of Richter’s work was on view at David Zwirner London. Prior exhibitions organized by the gallery in New York include Gerhard Richter: Prints & Multiples 1966–1993 (1994), Gerhard Richter: Early Paintings (2000), and Gerhard Richter: Landscapes (2004). The artist’s work is held in important public and private collections worldwide. Richter lives and works in Cologne.

Gerhard Richter Returns to Paris with Major David Zwirner Exhibition

Gerhard Richter, 25.7.2023, 2023. Ink and pencil on paper, 21.6 x 25.9 cm. Framed: 33.5 x 37.2 cm. Courtesy David Zwirner © Gerhard Richter 2025