From October 17, 2025, to March 2, 2026, the Fondation Louis Vuitton will present a major retrospective devoted to Gerhard Richter (born in Dresden in 1932), one of the most influential contemporary artists. After fleeing East Germany for Düsseldorf in 1961, Richter settled in Cologne, where he still lives and works.
Continuing its tradition of major monographic exhibitions dedicated to leading figures of 20th- and 21st-century art — such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Hockney — the Fondation Louis Vuitton will dedicate all its galleries to Richter. The show will gather 270 works spanning from 1962 to 2023, including oil paintings, glass and steel sculptures, pencil and ink drawings, watercolors, and overpainted photographs — the most comprehensive overview of his six-decade career ever assembled.
Gerhard Richter, Apfelbäume, 1987 (650-1)
Richter, who participated in the Fondation’s inaugural presentation in 2014, is honored here with a vast chronological survey curated by Dieter Schwarz and Nicholas Serota. The exhibition traces his evolution from early photo-based paintings to his late abstract works, revealing a practice defined by constant experimentation and refusal of categorization.
Gerhard Richter, Gudrun, 1987 (CR 633)
Though trained in traditional genres at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts — still life, portrait, landscape, and history painting — Richter reinterpreted them through a contemporary lens, always filtering reality through mediating images such as photographs or drawings. His methods evolved to include innovative uses of brush and squeegee, redefining the very act of painting.
