LOUISIANA, DENMARK.- The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presents Gerhard Richter – Image After Image, on view through May 29, 2005. Louisiana starts off the exhibition year 2005 with the fulfilment of a long-cherished wish – a striking presentation of the German painter Gerhard Richter with 81 selected works lent out by leading museums and private collectors all over the world. This is the first time that the Danish public has been given the opportunity to make the acquaintance of such a wide range of the works of this virtuoso, who stands out as a renewer of the painting tradition and a master of almost all genres in painting.

In November 2004 the Danish newspaper Politiken featured the surprising story of the discovery of the original source of Richter’s painting Three Sisters, 1965. No one – not even the artist himself – was aware that the magazine cutting used as the model for the painting of the three little girls in reality showed the three Danish princesses Margrethe (now HM Queen Margrethe II), Benedikte and Anne-Marie. Louisiana has succeeded in borrowing the much-discussed Richter work, and it will be included in the exhibition.

Richter’s work is in a class by itself. He likes to juggle with several styles at once: photorealist paintings, where the choice of subject is based on apparently anonymous material from newspapers and magazines or his own and others’ snapshots; portraits, everyday objects, landscapes and cityscapes – which in Richter’s hands are given new meaning; or the non-figurative, in which Richter is also interested, where the abstract painting either takes the form of almost geometrical constructions or a more direct type of painterly expression, often with the characteristic traces of the ‘doctor’ – a large scraper like the one used by printers – which he draws across the picture to intensify the play between depth and surface.

Gerhard Richter can be called one of the world’s most topical, highly-esteemed and sought-after artists, as evidenced by his top position in the list published by the German business magazine Capital-Kunstkompass 2004 of the hundred most sought-after artists in the world today.

Manfred Leve's photos of Gerhard Richter - As a visual biography and an introduction to Richter’s artistic universe, we are exhibiting a series of the photographer Manfred Leve’s pictures taken in the period 1967-1999, showing the artist in various settings. The presentation of the photo series has been supported by the Goethe-Institut in Copenhagen.