At the Tate Modern we can discover Panorama, an exploration of painting through the unique vision of one artist, not a collective work as we might expect. The exhibit shows 5 decades of work with each period bearing witness to its own diversity via a surprising approach. With Panorama, Gerhard Richter presents an interesting, unpretentious short-cut of the major artistic trends from abstraction to figuratism, in passing, of course, by photography.

The German painter became known for his unique style and technique. In the 60’s, Gerhard Richter used « painted photography » to plung into memories of Nazi Germany, a series where we see, side by side, his uncle in a Nazi uniform and his mentally ill aunt who was sacrificed in the name of the Aryan race. During the same era, he painted enormous flat gray paintings, the « gray painting » series takes on a strange look when painting meets photography, the mediums blend … and the result is mind-blowing !

From room to room, his work evolves, transforms, surprises ! Richter continues to work from photos, even though he is inspired by other great painters like Titien or Duchamp. To the latter he owes « Emma, nude on staircase», a reproduction of Duchamp’s painting except that it’s the opposite : Richter photographed his wife on the staircase and then painted her, hair by hair, with surgical precision.

Always unpredictable, he is capable of changing his style as often as we change moods. It is with surprise and amazement that the painter then offers us an explosion of colors, passing from a monochromatic work to an immense multicolored checkerboard in his « Color Chart » series, a reference to Pop Art’s acidic colors and the Bauhaus’ geometric strictness. With « Abstract Paintings », he innovates once again to present a grandiose work on gigantic canvases.

http://www.tate.org.uk