Atlas

Collage.
The State Gallery. Lenbachau and Kunstbau, Munich (Germany).

The “Atlas” includes various photographs, clippings from newspapers and magazines, postcards, different small items that Gerhard Richter collected throughout almost his entire long career as an artist. Many of them served as material for the creation of full-scale paintings, while others remained unclaimed but survived as evidence of a certain stage in his life. Richter glued all these things onto large sheets of paper, turning them into an art object that takes part in his exhibitions along with paintings. Fans of the work of the German artist claim that the “Atlas” where everyday objects such as dried flowers or a toilet roll can easily coexist with terrifying images of the Holocaust demonstrates Richter’s philosophy, his desire to show life as it is, with all its accidents and patterns.