The cabinet exhibition "Gerd Richter 1961/62" is dedicated to the hitherto largely unexplored period in Gerhard Richter's life: the two years from his flight from Dresden to the Federal Republic to the beginning of his official catalog of works with the first numbered pictures.
Shortly after moving to Düsseldorf, Gerhard Richter, who at that time still called himself Gerd, attended the Staatliche Kunstakademie there and within 18 months developed an independent style of painting based on photographic models and inspired by American Pop Art.
The exhibition illustrates Richter's consistent liberation from his figurative pictorial language established in Dresden to abstraction and non-objective experiments, by means of paintings and drawings created during these months, which for years were considered destroyed by the artist. In addition, numerous letters document this important early development of the artist, which the Gerhard Richter Archive was able to acquire more than ten years ago in two extensive volumes.
