Atlas

This monumental publication maps the ideas, processes, life and times of one of the most important painters of the late twentieth century. Having left East Germany in 1961, where he had already established a reputation as a Realist painter, Gerhard Richter went on to attend the Dusseldorf Academy, striking out on a radical new path and changing the history of painting as he looked to photography for a way to release painting from the political and symbolic burdens of Socialist Realism and Abstract Expressionism.
Conceived and closely edited by Gerhard Richter himself, Atlas cuts straight to the heart of the artist's work, presenting the photographs, drawings and sketches that he has compiled or created since the moment of his creative breakthrough in 1962. From pictures of family and friends to images from the mass media, Richter's photographs - sometimes found, sometimes original - have provided the basis for many of his paintings, often re-emerging in a luminous, monochromatic palette, and falling ambiguously between documentary and historical painting. The images closely parallel, year by year, the subjects of Richter's paintings, revealing the orderly but open-ended analysis that has been so central to his art. Offering invaluable insight into Richter's working process, this monumental new edition, which completely revises and updates the rare, out-of-print 1997 edition, features 783 multi-image sheets, each reproduced full page and in full color.