Gerhard Richter celebrated his 80th birthday on February 9, 2012. In tribute to one of the most important artists of the present day, declared the ‘Picasso of the 21st century’ in 2004 by The Guardian, the Nationalgalerie Berlin is holding a comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work. The exhibition, entitled Gerhard Richter: Panorama, is organized in conjunction with Tate Modern in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The term ‘panorama’ is taken from the Greek and is formed by the combination of the words ‘all’ and ‘seeing’. In English it has come to mean an unbroken view of an entire area. In a panorama, the expanse reveals itself to the viewer as you shift your gaze over time and through space. There is no one single view, rather a series of many views that combine to form a seamless whole. Correspondingly, the exhibition on the upper floor of the Neue Nationalgalerie has been conceived as a broad cyclorama that gradually unfolds in a series of expansive, open rooms. Around 130 paintings and five sculptures, selected in close cooperation with the artist himself, provide an insight into Richter’s manifold body of work, amassed over the course of five decades.
