Gerhard Richter / Die Editionen

The catalogue Gerhard Richter. The Editions offers an overview of Gerhard Richter’s artistic production spanning more than five decades.

Since the 1960s, Richter has used editions as a way to reinterpret his work while making it accessible to a wider audience. His early prints already demonstrate that the questions central to his painting also appear in his editions—yet articulated in new and often surprising ways: questions concerning the relationship between original and reproduction, the nature of painting and photography, and the legibility of images.

Richter’s engagement with various printing techniques and painterly strategies is marked by openness and a spirit of experimentation. Again and again, he questions his own understanding of himself as an artist: “Sometimes I think I shouldn’t call myself a painter, but a picture-maker. I am more interested in pictures than in painting.” In his editions, too, Richter experiments with painterly processes, creating what he calls unique works produced in series.