This season, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo is celebrating the 90th birthday of German visual artist Gerhard Richter though a compresenvie exhibition that showcases the artist's oeuvre from the last six decades of his career. Featured works range from abstract paintings and photographs to digital prints and conceputal art made with glass, demonstrating Richter's astonishing versatility as an artist.
The pièce de résistance is one of Richter's most recent works titled 'Birkenau', which has never been shown in Japan before. The work comprises four large paintings created by layering images copied from photographs secretly taken by a Holocaust prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. According to the Momat, Gerhard first attempted the project in the 60s but abandoned it several times due to the weight of the subject at hand. It was only in 2014 that he finally completed the paintings, content that he had successfully completed what he had set out to do at the beginning of his career.