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Daniel Richter: a major survey at the Denver Art Museum

Ferbenlaare

Ferbenlaare. © 2005, Daniel Richter. Photo: Jochen Littkemann. Courtesy: CFA Berlin

D.P.II, 2007-2008

D.P.II, 2007-2008, Daniel Richter. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

WUTANG

WUTANG. © 2000, Daniel Richter. Photo: Jochen Littkemann. Courtesy: CFA Berlin.

Daniel Richter: major survey at Denver Art Museum

October 4, 2008 thorough January 11, 2009

Denver Art Museum present Daniel Richter: A Major Survey from October 4, 2008 thorough January 11, 2009. Exhibition marks first U.S. museum retrospective of contemporary German painter. The exhibition will feature more than 25 large-format paintings and a selection from a series of more than 400 small format works

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“The Richter exhibition is a natural step in the evolution of the Denver Art Museum’s modern and contemporary programming, and we are thrilled to bring this internationally significant exhibition to the United States,” said Lewis I. Sharp, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the Denver Art Museum.

Born in Germany in 1962, Richter developed his artistic background designing posters and record sleeves for punk bands in the 1980s. As his career evolved, he studied painting at the Hamburg Hochschule für bildende Künste, spending considerable time with Albert Oehlen and Werner Büttner. Richter’s work combines clichés from art history, the mass media and popular culture, creating unusual narratives and pictorial worlds. The exhibition will provide an overview of his painting to date, illustrating an evolution from his earlier abstract works, with bold psychedelic colors that oscillate between graffiti and pattern, to works that morphed abstraction into depictions of the human figure, often inspired by images in newspapers and history books

One of Richter’s earlier abstract works, WUTANG (2000), combines bright, vibrant pulsating color and delicate forms. In DPII (2007), a reduced palette of red, blue and black – combined with fine lines and flickering surfaces — charges the painting with an aggressive energy. The visual reference to thermographic imaging and the light shining through the figures implies a culture of surveillance, in which the figures are not just aggressors, but passive objects as well. In 2005, Richter took a brief hiatus from larger-stage scenes to focus on more intimate theatrical spaces, and a succession of isolated figures appear in his work. In Ferbenlaare (2005), the figure appears virtually paralyzed by a grid, recalling the color chart paintings of Gerhard Richter.

 

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Daniel Richter: a major survey at the Denver Art Museum