Gerhard Richter Painting

While museums around the world are shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibition openings will be replaced by a selection of digital initiatives providing virtual access to art and culture.

The Met Breuer opened ‘Gerhard Richter: Painting After All’ on 4 March, less than ten days before the museum closed its doors indefinitely. On the Met’s website, you can read a ‘primer’ and watch a short video tour of the exhibition, which covers some 100 works from across the German artist’s career. The video is scored to a performance of Fratres, a composition for piano and violin by Arvo Pärt, with whom Richter has previously collaborated. Offering a more in-depth encounter with the artist, meanwhile, is the feature-length documentary Gerhard Richter Painting, first released in 2011 and currently available to stream online (until early July). Film-maker Corinna Belz documents the hours she spent in Richter’s studio in Cologne in the spring and summer of 2009 while he was working on a series of large abstract canvases, using his famous homemade ‘squeegee’ to drag paint across their vast surfaces.

Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here