Gerhard Richter Images of an Era

This volume presents and describes 50 of the artist's works with essays by leading Richter experts. It also includes personal testimonials in previously unpublished letters as well as a conversation between Gerhard Richter and Richter expert Uwe Schneede. This book provides new insight into the complexity of Richter's imagery in which banality and evil confront one another: the dreams and aspirations of the times, fast cars and new travel possibilities; personal memories; the oppressive past; contemporary politics; and both trivial and meaningful everyday objects. The cycle 18 Oktober 1977 (1988), which deals with the death of members of the Red Army Faction ('Baader-Meinhof gang') plays an important role in our understanding of the evocative power of these pictures from the 1960s. Richter's intense preoccupation with this event concludes this group of paintings from photographs. This cycle, which was loaned to the Bucerius Kunst forum in Hamburg by the New York Museum of Modern Art, has led to a new interpretation and positioning of Richter's work.