Move over Warhol: Scotland to get '21st-century Picasso'

Published on Monday 12 May 2008 22:11

THE first major UK show in 16 years by a German artist dubbed the "Picasso of the 21st century" will be hosted by the National Galleries of Scotland, it was announced yesterday.

The first exhibition in Scotland devoted to the painter Gerhard Richter will include 60 works spanning 40 years, in what was claimed as "an international coup".

John Leighton, the galleries' director-general, described Richter as "arguably the most influential and important artist alive today".

The Richter show is the second exhibition in a two-part, 400,000 Bank of Scotland sponsorship deal. The first was Andy Warhol: A Celebration of Life and Death, which drew over 95,000 people last summer.

In an unusual move, the galleries said they were replacing the previously announced show by the German artist Joseph Beuys, who died in 1986, with the one by Richter.

It will run from 8 November to 4 January, 2009. A show running in Berlin at the same time made it hard to secure loans of Beuys' works, staff said.

Richter was born in Dresden in 1932. His childhood was shaped by the Nazi era and his youth by life in communist East Germany, before he fled to the West in 1961, just before the Berlin Wall was built.

He is hardly a household name in Britain, but his 1963 painting Dsenjger (JetFighter) sold in New York last year for 5.4 million, a record price for his work.

His paintings include lifelike works based on photographs, sometimes working from images projected on to his canvas, blurring or smearing the results. But they also range from large, brilliantly coloured abstract paintings, to one set of canvases that are entirely grey.

Simon Groom, the galleries' director of modern and contemporary art, yesterday showcased works such as Candle, an almost photographic image of a candle, and Slope, an abstract mix of yellows, blues and reds.

"Having an exhibition by Richter is like being able to examine first-hand the whole history of painting," he said. "Every contemporary artist feels that they owe him a debt."

The Tate Modern in London is currently showing one room of Richter's paintings, Cage. The exhibition coming to Edinburgh, Gerhard Richter: Paintings from Private Collections, includes work owned by three major collectors and Richter himself. The artist is expected to come to Edinburgh.

The exhibition opened in Baden-Baden, Germany, and is now in Beijing. After showing here, it will travel on to the Albertine Museum in Vienna.

"That puts us in the sequence of top international venues," said Mr Leighton. However, he expects the winter show to be seen by far fewer people than the Warhol exhibition, hoping for "more than 10,000 visitors".

The art dealer Anthony D'Offay, who recently sold his huge collection to the National Galleries of Scotland and the Tate for a knock-down price, is a close friend of Richter, with more than 40 of his works. He helped persuade the painter to bring the show to Edinburgh.