Synopsis "The Richter Interviews"
The Richter Interviews collects conversations between Hans Ulrich Obrist and Gerhard Richter conducted over the course of more than two decades of discussion and collaboration. Subjects discussed range from Richter’s place within art history to artists’ books, architecture, religion, unrealized projects and his advice for young artists. This collection also includes a previously unpublished interview focused on Richter’s much-lauded window for Cologne Cathedral.Obrist’s vast knowledge and interrogating mind, coupled with his longstanding friendship with Richter, make him a unique interlocutor for the artist, whose work spans more than 60 years and ranges from painting to photography, glass to printmaking, watercolors to books.Illustrations of artworks discussed by Richter accompany the texts for visual reference―making this an indispensable guide to the thinking and creative processes of one of the world’s most admired artists.Born in Dresden, East Germany, in 1932, Gerhard Richter migrated to West Germany in 1961, settling in Düsseldorf, where he studied at the Düsseldorf Academy, and where he held his first solo exhibition in 1963. Over the course of that decade, Richter helped to liberate painting from the legacy of socialist realism (in Eastern Germany) and abstract expressionism (in Western Germany and throughout Europe). He has exhibited internationally for the last five decades, with retrospectives in New York, Paris and Düsseldorf. He lives and works in Cologne.Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a world-renowned curator and the artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. Alongside his curatorial practice, Obrist has written extensively on and around contemporary art, with a particular interest in the interview format. Among his recent publications are Conversations in Colombia (2016) and The Czech Files (2015).
