‘SD’ (1985), by Gerhard Richter. © GERHARD RICHTER 2025
The 35th exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton is dedicated to the German artist Gerhard Richter. Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter received the Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 and, that same year, was awarded the Praemium Imperiale – often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of the arts” – for painting, in Tokyo. With 271 works, this is the most extensive exhibition ever held; the one organized in 2020 at the Met Breuer in New York featured around 100 works and had to close after just eight days due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This retrospective covers the artist’s entire career (except for works from his youth, which were created while he lived in East Germany), with rare loans coming from museums across Europe, the United States, Asia and numerous private collections. The two curators, the British Sir Nicholas Serota, who formerly directed the Tate in London, and the Swiss Dieter Schwarz, of the Kunst Museum Winterthur, worked to convince lenders one by one. As a result, all of Richter’s most important series are present, including Birkenau, which has never before been shown in Paris.
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