Gerhard Richter

The two great polar tendencies of Gerhard Richter's art--pure abstraction and photorealism--have never been at odds with one another, and are in fact complementary aspects of Richter's total vision. Nowhere is this more stunningly evident than in Richter's latest series of paintings, completed in the summer of 1999 after a long break and presented here in book form for the first time. These works present one of the great artists of the contemporary era rediscovering the sheer pleasures of painting--Richter here revels in color, texture, and form. "Bilder 1999" moves from abstract, expressionistic shapes, to landscapes, to portraits of an infant, all the while maintaining a sense of cohesiveness and a consistency of aesthetic beauty. Reproduced in glorious color, "Gerhard Bilder 1999" also features a perceptive text by Julian Heynen.