Gerhard Richter's Overpainted Photographs Presented by Fundación Telefónica

Fundación Telefónica presents the personal project of one of the greatest creators of the XX century, made of more than 300 painted pictures coming from his personal albums. The show includes images from private collections and from the artist himself on which Richter has worked since 1989 until the present. Gerhard Richter is considered one of the most influential artists of our time without ever having limited himself to one single style. His varied production includes sculptures and paintings that range from landscapes to colourist abstractions and monochromatic greys. Dragging the photos over wet paint, Richter creates new images.

Richter has initiated a fruitful dialogue between painting and photography that has resulted in his painted photographs, small-format images taken during his travels, walks or within his own home. Those images that do not fit within his personal album due to their lack of specificity or focus or for being duplicates are subsequently painted. The images that compose the Overpainted Photographs exhibition come from private collections and the artist’s own collection, and they reflect the intensity and perseverance with which Richter has worked on this project from 1989 to the present day.

Gerhard Richter (Dresden, Germany, 1932) was trained in the Dresden and Dusseldorf art academies and learned photography as a laboratory technician. At the end of the nineteen sixties, he worked together with artists such as Polke and Baselitz, forming what was called Capitalist Realism. Following his first exhibition in 1963, he has received prizes such as the Junger Westen, Arnold Bode and Oskar Kokoschka awards. Furthermore, in 1972 he represented Germany in the Venice Biennale and participated in the Kassel Documentas of 1977, 1982 and 1987. In 2001, the MoMA organised Richter’s first large retrospective Forty Years of Painting.

Telefonica Foundation (Fundación Telefónica)’s Art and Technology website. The Foundation, based in Madrid, Spain, creates exhibitions and manages collections related to media art, cyberculture, contemporary art and telecommunications. The site provides information about: temporary exhibitions, held at the Telefonica Museum and Temporary Exhibition Halls; virtuality and cyber art activities, which include installations, exhibitions, commentary, and competitions; and in-house productions of exhibitions, installations and projects. The site also provides information about its two collections: The Historical-Technological Collection, which traces the “evolution of telecommunications from its origins through to the late 1960′s”; and the art collections, of figurative art and Spanish contemporary art. www.fundacion.telefonica.com/

About these ads