German occupies the second place in the ranking of most expensive living artists, second only to Jeff Koons

the Jewish Museum and tolerance center
9 November 2016 – February 5 2016
Moscow, Obraztsova str., 11, p. 1A

the Jewish Museum and tolerance center will show at the end of autumn the exhibition "Abstraction and image", which will reflect all stages of the creative path of the artist – from figurative and neo expressionism to abstraction. From 1973 to 2016-й. The curator of the Moscow exhibition became Paul Moorhouse, art historian and senior specialist in the art of XX century from London's National portrait gallery.

Work is quite a lot. But the emphasis the organizers will make a series of four large-scale pictorial abstractions "Birkenau" (2014). It was written under the impression from the photographs taken in Birkenau concentration camp in 1944. Abstractions are exhibited together with photographs and fragments of these images, forming a single installation.

High visibility Richter abstractions provided by his unusual technique. It is known that the artist puts on a light background, different colors, and then with a huge "spatula" and "scraper" (it is said that it is the size of the bumper of a car) carries paint across the canvas. Due to the uneven mixing and scraping layers of paint out of intricate and well-recognizable color transitions and images.

Richter – an artist of amazing talent and an amazing destiny. His career is a vivid illustration of how rapidly may be a process of recognition and how much time is sometimes required for the supervisors and the market to consider talent. It is today auction sales of works by Richter is comparable with a turnover of Picasso and Warhol. The work of German are worth millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars. But to get it all started 20 years ago, after new-йоркский Museum of modern art purchased the series of works by Richter. Before that, his career developed very modestly and without much success. Very indicative in this sense, the story of his now famous series of paintings "Glow" — photorealistic, but blurred images of a burning stearin candles. In the mid 1980-х years on exhibition in the gallery of max Hetzler in Stuttgart for the paintings asked for at least $ 6,000. And they say that nobody ever bought. But in 2010-х years seeing collectors pay for these works for 16 000 000 $ .

Vladimir Bogdanov, AI

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"Abstract painting" by Gerhard Richter went for $ 46.3 million