Gerhard Richter (born Dresden, 1932) is one of the world’s greatest living artists. Since the early 1960s he has tirelessly explored the medium of painting at a time when many were heralding its death. He has produced a remarkably varied body of work, including photography-based portrait, landscape and still-life paintings; gestural and monochrome abstractions; and colour chart grid paintings. In autumn 2008, the Serpentine presented 4900 Colours, a major new work comprising bright monochrome squares randomly arranged in a grid formation to create stunning sheets of kaleidoscopic colour.
4900 Colours comprises 196 square panels of 25 coloured squares that can be reconfigured in a number of variations, from one large-scale piece to multiple, smaller paintings. Richter developed a new version especially for the Serpentine Gallery exhibition: 4900 Colours: Version II, formed of 49 paintings of 100 squares.
4900 Colours is in the context of Richter’s design for the south transept window of Cologne Cathedral, which replaced the stained glass that was destroyed in World War II. Cathedral Window, unveiled in August 2007, comprises 11,500 hand-blown squares of glass in 72 colours that are derived from the palette of the original medieval glazing.
Richter produced the first in his series of grid paintings in 1966 in which he replicated, in large scale, industrial colour charts produced by paint manufacturers. As with his photo-paintings, the use of found material as a source removed the subjective compositional preferences of the artist, however, the Colour Chart Paintings took this a step further, eradicating any hierarchy of subject or representational intent, and focusing on colour to create an egalitarian language of art.
Since 1964, Gerhard Richter has had more than 100 solo exhibitions worldwide. He represented Germany at the 36th Venice Biennale in 1972 and was the subject of a major touring retrospective, Forty Years of Painting, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2002.
Gerhard Richter
4900 Colours: Version II, 2007
Enamel paint on Aludibond
49 Panels, each 97 × 97 cm
La Collection de la Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création
© 2008 Gerhard Richter
Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London
(23 September - 23 November 2008)
Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London
(23 September - 23 November 2008)
Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London
(23 September - 23 November 2008)
Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London
(23 September - 23 November 2008)
