Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)
The Garden of Earthly Delights

Madrid
Museo del Prado [1977]

1467-1470

While the Florentines explored such formal aspects of painting as perspective and color, the Northern Europeans continued to explore the mystical and spirital dimensions of the fading Gothic: e.g., Hieronymus Bosch and Mathias Grünewald. - Curiously Bosch employed Italian neoplatonic motives: his Garden of Delights appears to be based on the philosophical teachings of Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. [1977, 2001]

The Garden has another distinction, painted in 1468-70 it is Bosch's earliest major work. He was barely 20.
And a final conundrum: why did all major Bosch paintings (save for the Triptych of theTemptation of Saint Anthony) end in the possession of the most Catholic King Philip II of Spain?

For further musings on these and other Bosch puzzles read The Life and Times of Hieronymus Bosch

Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, 1477-1510)
The Tempest

Gallerie dell'Accademia
Venice

1506

This small paiting of 82 x 73 cm has a rather overbearing significance in Western painting: it is the first landscape painting where the landscape is not the mere backdrop for a mythological or allegorical collection of people: This is a real thunderstorm about to break over the idyllic pastoral scene, a small town, a soldier and a nude woman feeding her baby. - Who are these two people? - The painting has namely yet another claim : it is the first nude who is not a Roman Venus, a nymph or has another excuse for being naked... - A lot has been written trying to explain the existance of these two under the billowing clouds.

I believe that the solution is very simple, that Giorgione had no allegorical thoughts in his mind - he simply described the homecoming of a soldier to his wife and child, whom he sees for the first time - hence his smile. The clouds of war are in fact receeding in the distance. - Of course, this leaves the question of how Giorgione considered such a banal event worth one of his loveliest paintings - and that may be the most remarkable novelty of this canvas. [Easter 1994]

"Though he died at 33, Giorgione left a lasting legacy to be developed by Titian and 17th-century artists. Giorgione never subordinated line and colour to architecture (perspective), nor an artistic effect to a sentimental presentation. He was the first to paint landscapes with figures, the first to paint genre, movable pictures in their own frames with no devotional, allegorical, or historical purpose and the first whose colours possessed that ardent, glowing, and melting intensity which was so soon to typify the work of the Venetian School." Quoted from wikipedia

Michelangelo
The Sistine Chapel

Vatican
Rome

1508-1512

The restored ceiling [2005]

Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel needs no introduction. It stands here primarily as a commemorative to a visit with Barbara in 2005 when the restoration had just been opened to the public. The Last Judgment was still under wraps. - We fought our way to the chapel among thousands of people, saw nothing of the Vatican treasures – and came back deeply moved by the new colors. - Someone else had permission to photograph the miracle.

Matthias Neidhard Grünewald
The Isenheimer Altar

Colmar
Museum Unter den Linden

1515

Contemporaneously with Giorgione and Michelangelo Grünewald painted a most ecstatic and flamboyantly religious altar retable in high-Gothic style, the Isenheimer Altar now in Colmar. [Barbara 1979]

View of the closed altar

View of the open altar

The altar is composed of nine images on twelve panels which are arranged on double wings to present three views, according to the season or occasion. The first view with the outer wings closed shows a Crucifixion flanked by Saint Sebastien and Saint Anthony, with a predella showing the entombment. When the first set of wings is opened, the Annunciation, Angelic Concert, Mary bathing Christ, and the Resurrection are displayed. The third view (shown below) discloses a carved and gilded wood altarpiece by Nicolas Hagenau (1490) flanked by a Temptation of St. Anthony and Anthony's visit to St. Paul.

In addition to being Grünewald's greatest surviving work, the altarpiece is 2.65 metres high and over 5 metres wide at its fullest extent !

Third view, Nicolas Hagenau's gilded-wood altar with Grünewald's St. Anthony panels attached to it

The altar was commissioned by the Anthonite monks of Isenheim, 15 km south of Colmar, for their church. The monks would place the terminally ill under this altar- some say victims of the bubonic plague, some of syphilis, and others of “St. Anthont Fire” caused by a grain fungus. The altar barely escaped destruction during the French revolution and in WW I. There is nothing left to see in present Issenheim, Alsace, the monastery burnt down.

Jacopo Pontormo (Jacopo Caruzzi) (1494-1557),
Deposition and Annunciation

Florence
Santa Felicita
Cappella Capponi

1526-28

Pontormo is considered a mannerist and hence is often overlooked. I passed Santa Felicita many times until one day I looked inside - and discovered this superbly restored altar. - It has become one of my favorite paintings. At times I believe that the women surrounding Christ are different incarnations of one and the same woman - including Christ! - The altar is framed by an al fresco Annunciation also by Pontormo. [2002]

Jacopo Pontormo
The Visitation

Florence,
Uffici, from Santa Anunzziata

1528-29

Having been primed to Pontormo, I found this emotionally restrained painting by him in the Uffici. [2002]

Jacopo Pontormo, full of restless movement and disconcertingly irrational effects of scale and space - put him in the vanguard of Mannerism. In 1518 he completed an altarpiece for the Church of San Michele Visdomini, Florence, that also reflects its agitated - almost neurotic - emotionalism a departure from the balance and tranquillity of the Renaissance.
The emotional tension apparent in his work reaches its peak in Pontormo's masterpiece, the altarpiece of the Entombment (c.1526-28) in the Cappella Capponi at Santa Felicitá Florence. Painted in extraordinarily vivid colors and featuring deeply poignant figures who seem lost in a trance of grief. From Web Gallery of Art.

Titian (Tiziano Vecelli 1488-1576)
Emperor Karl V

München
Alte Pinakothek

1548

This large portrait was painted during the imperial Diet of Augsburg in 1548. It is, however, thought that Titian did not create the work single-handedly. There is an awkwardness in the foreshortening of the perspective of the chair; and the red carpet is an isolated colour contrast, very unusual in Titian's work. But there are also areas of high quality. The face, above all, demonstrates a fine power of observation. The deformation of Charles' lower jaw has been skillfully concealed. The intimate atmosphere of the painting, which contains no regal affectations, is unusual in Titian's portraits of rulers. [1972, 1994]

Titian was the first Italian artist to acquire a truly international clientele, and this owed much to the fame of his portraits. Portraiture provided a constant stimulus for his interest in psychology as well as an opportunity to meet and cultivate potential patrons. His artistic goals conformed to the expectations of a time when portraiture was more and more being used to fashion a self-conscious public image: an adequately flattering likeness, an account of the sitter's public or private status that impressed or at least was of some interest, and a record of character that was sufficiently reticent not to be intrusive or offensive but enough to bring the subject to life. It had been commonplace since antiquity to praise artists for making their sitters come alive, but the repeated praise Titian received in this respect indicates he was perceived as breaking new ground. He does this in two ways: first, by describing his sitter's personality or state of mind much more clearly and specifically than other Italian Renaissance artists, with the notable exception of Raphael; secondly, by marrying this psychological profile with an indication of the sitter's social standing - always an essential function of portraiture - in a way that allows the artist to flatter under the guise of telling the truth. From Web Gallery of Art

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 1541-1614)
Seven large canvasses painted for the chapel of the Collegio de Dona Maria
Madrid

Museo del Prado,
Madrid

1596 – 1600

The Dona Maria de Aragon chapel was the most important commission El Greco received, and he was paid just under 6000 ducats for it, a vast sum, and more than he earned for any other work. It was here that he first fully realised the traits of his late, 'mystical' style - elongated forms, flickering effects of light, colour combinations that verge on dissonance (copper-resinate green, rose-to-magenta, golden yellow and blue), and an emphasis on ecstatic gestures and expressions [1997]

Nativity and Baptism, (350 x 144 cm)

Following the suppression by Joseph Bonaparte of the religious orders in Spain, the chapel with its paintings was dismantled in 1810. No detailed description of it survives, but according to a document of 1814 it comprised seven paintings and six sculptures. There has been much debate in recent years over the altarpiece's original appearance, but there is considerable agreement that it comprised five paintings today in the Prado, The Resurrection, The Crucifixion, The Pentecost, The Baptism of Christ and The Annunciation, and a sixth, The Adoration of the Shepherds, in Bucharest. The seventh painting is presumed lost, and it has been suggested that it may have been a Coronation of the Virgin.

When we visited the Prado in the summer of 1997 it was being reorganized and the 5 paintings from the Dona Maria Chapel had been squeezed next to each other into a small, very high room. The effect was over powering, the distortions and colors even worse than if seen from a distance. I fled but Barbara spent another hour among them.

El Greco
The Opening of the Seventh Seal
(according to the Revelations of St. John)

Metropolitan Museum
New York

1608-1614

Searching the internet for reproductions for my gallery I came across this El Greco which I only had a dim memory of.[1958]

The Opening of the Fifth Seal, (225 x 200 (375) cm, truncated top) 1608-14

The Opening of the Fifth Seal (or The Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse or The Vision of Saint John, Book of Revelation 6:9-11) was painted in the last years of El Greco's life for a side-altar of the church of Saint John the Baptist outside the walls of Toledo. In the 19^th century the poorly preserved canvas was “restored”and cut by at least 175 cm on top. After being owned by the Spanish painter Zuloaga it was acquired by the Metropolitan. Zualaga showed the painting to Rilke and to Picasso, whom it inspired to paint Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
The Three Crosses

Rembrandthuis
Amsterdam

1653

The Three Crosses, drypoint etching, 1653

The “Man in the Gold Helmet” was my first infatuation with Rembrandt [1950]. A visit to the Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam [2001] changed all that. His prints and drawings are – even more than with Dürer - much more exciting.

Johannes Vermeer
Pregnant Woman reading a letter

Rijksmuseum
Amsterdam

1662

Pregnant Woman reading a Letter 1662

A very similar thing happened to me with the glowing paintings of Vermeer. I first encountered his “Girl with the Red Hat” after a conference in Washington, DC [1993]. I collected a webpage with all his paintings in 1995, but Vermeer's colors cannot be reproduced, one has to see his small pictures in loco. On our grand museums tour in 2001 I made a systematic search of Vermeer's pictures in Amsterdam and Belgium and this unpresumptous oil became my favourite. [1993, 2001]

Dominikus Zimmermann
The Church on the Wies, Bavaria
1745-54

For me the synthesis of architecture, stucco, and painting combined with the music of Mozart in the village churches and monasteries of Bavaria is the highest expression of Baroque art. None of the great Italian examples can compete with them - maybe with the exception of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in Rome. But in the Sistina there is no organ to fill the space with heavenly music.... [1951, 1972, 2000]

William Turner 1789-1862

National Gallery, London
1838

The Good Ship Temerain Being Towed to her Last Berth, 1838

The Museum Marmottan is often overlooked by visitors to Paris, and yet it houses a unique collection of Monets, in which the painter pushed the impressionist style to its abstract limits. This sunrise over an industrial landscape (London?) is one of them. [1998]

Piet Mondrian 1872-1944

Gemeente Museum
The Hague
The Early Mondrian 1893-1908

Mondrian is well known for his geometrical abstracts, one has to visit the Gemeente Museum in the Hague to discover his underlying intimate spiritual and philosophical side. In 1908 he became interested in the theosophical movement launched by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the late 19th century, and he joined the Dutch branch of the Theosophical Society in 1909. The thinking of Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy significantly affected the further development of his painting. The formalism of Mondrian's later work masks his life-long search for spiritual gnosis.
His early paintings show only a faint shadow of the abstraction to come: a series of canvases from 1895 to 1908, which depict dim scenes of indistinct trees and houses with reflections in still water. These paintings are firmly rooted in nature, and it is only our knowledge of Mondrian's later achievements that leads one to search for the roots of his future abstraction in these works.[2001]

Woods, 1900

The Woods near Oele, 1908

Paul Gauguin 1848-1903

Pushkin Museum
Moscow

1892

Originally acquired by two wealthy textile manufacturers in the last decades before the revolution the art collections of Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin are now the center of attraction at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Aha oe feii? (Are You Jealous?), 1892

Was it the the surprise of finding this Gauguin unexpectedly, or the heightened awareness of being in Moscow in in the middle of the Cold War - Gauguin's Pink Beach burned a triangular hole into my retina, which lasted for years.... [1977]

Pablo Picasso
Les Demoiselles de Avignon

MOMA, New York

1907

The following three paintings by Picasso and Matisse are considered corner stones of 20^th cent painting. They are huge and (in my eyes) not particularly beautiful. Picasso's pink Ladies of Avignon founded Cubism, the pair of Matisse canvasses for Shchukin Fauvism. Both belong to a wave of primitivism, which goes back to Gauguin, while the Demoiselles are connected even to El Greco. - Never mind the labels attached to movements in art criticism.... [2001]

Les Demoiselles de Avignon, 230x240 cm, 1907

At the time of its first exhibition in 1916 – nine years after Picasso had painted it - the painting was still considered immoral. Picasso had always referred to it as Le Bordel d'Avignon, but art critic André Salmon, who managed its first exhibition titled it Les Demoiselles d'Avignon to lessen its scandalous impact on the public. Picasso never liked Salmon's title, and would have preferred las chicas de Avignon instead.

In 1988 New York art-critic Leo Steinberg summed up the revolutionary nature of Les Demoiselles:

“Picasso was resolved to undo the continuities of form and field which Western art had so long taken for granted. The famous stylistic rupture of the painting at right turned out to be merely a consummation. Overnight, the contrived coherences of representational art - the feigned unities of time and place, the stylistic consistencies - all were declared to be fictional. The Demoiselles confessed itself a picture conceived in duration and delivered in spasms. In this one work Picasso discovered that the demands of discontinuity could be met on multiple levels: by cleaving depicted flesh; by elision of limbs and abbreviation; by slashing the web of connecting space; by abrupt changes of vantage; and by a sudden stylistic shift at the climax. Finally, the insistent staccato of the presentation was found to intensify the picture's address and symbolic charge: the beholder, instead of observing a roomfuI of lazing whores, is targeted from all sides. So far from suppressing the subject, the mode of organization heightens its flagrant eroticism.” Wikipedia

Henri Matisse
Dance and Music

Hermitage,
St. Petersburg

1910

Dance is a large decorative panel, which Matisse painted with a companion piece, Music, specifically for the Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, with whom Matisse had a long association. Until the October Revolution of 1917 both paintings hung together in the staircase of Shchukin's Moscow mansion.[1977]

Music, 260x390 cm, 1910

Matisse made the painting without any preparatory sketches, and thus the painting bears many traces of modifications. One can virtually trace the steps Matisse took to find the intended effect. Like in Dance, the aim was to show man's attainment of a state of completeness by immersion in creativity.

The Dance, 260x390 cm, 1910

The canvas' five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, are set against a highly simplified green landscape and deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist color palette: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. The painting is often associated with the "Dance of the Young Girls" from Igor Stravinsky's The Rites of Spring. [1977]

Emil Nolde, (born Emil Hansen) (1867-1956)

München
Pinakothek der Moderne

1910

The Pinakothek der Modernen is Munich's new (2002) venue for 20th-century art. It houses a collection of "classical" modern paintings, which, however, cannot compete in size, selection, and quality with, e.g., that of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, not to mention MOMA in New York. One reason is architectual: the small exhibition rooms cramp the viewer.
To make up for the unexciting in-house collection the museum has mounted a number of outstanding special exhibitions among them the 2007 a "Beckmann in Amsterdam" show.
A second museum for contemporary art will open 2011.

Among the notable permanent holdings are several wildly luminous paintings by Emil Nolde.[2002]

Emil Nolde, Dance around the Golden Calf, 1910

Vasily Kandinsky
The Way into Abstraction

Museum Lenbachhaus
München

1909-1913

We are fortunate that, when Kandinsky fled Munich for Moscow in 1914, le left his entire body of paintings from the Munich years with Gabriele Münther in warehouses in Müchen – where they survived both World Wars and the Nazi years. They are now housed in the Lenbachhaus, one of Munich's secrets. They comprise a unique record of Kandinsky's way into abstraction [1972, 1994, 2000]

Diningroom, Ainmillerstr 31, 1909

The Holy Mountain, 1909

The Development of Composition VII, 1913
Among his paintings at the Lenbachhaus Composition VII takes a special place

Composition VII, Vers.1 (78x100cm ) 1913

Composition VII, Vers.2 (100x140cm) 1913

Composition VII, Vers.3 (90x125 cm) 1913

Vassili Kandinsky, Composition VII, Final Vers. 4, Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery, 200x300cm, November 25-28, 1913

In terms of labor, complexity, and subjective involvement Composition VII must be considered Kandinsky's major achievement.

Work on the preliminary versions of this painting began as early as 1909. We know over thirty drawings, watercolors and detailed studies related to Composition VII. There are sheets which invariably repeat one single curved line; others show schematic outlines of the main structural elements of the composition; still others contain detailed plans for preparing the canvas. Despite their chaotic, spontaneous appearence he left nothing in these paintings to chance - no curlicue, form, or color. Composition VII combines thematic pieces from The Resurrection, The Last Judgment, The Deluge and The Garden of Love in an operatic outburst of pure painting.

Kandinsky began painting the 200x300cm final Version on November 25, 1913, It was finished three days later on November 28, 1913. A stupendous labor. Gabriele Münther recorded the process in a series of photographs, which are kept at the Lenbachhaus together with all variants. The final painting is now owned by the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. [1977]

Amedeo Modigliani, 1884-1920

Nudes, 1917-1918

Fascinated by Modigliani's portraits since childhood, I once set out to collect all of his nudes: at least 16 gorgeous women from an occasional cocotte to regal Alexandra, in every position imaginable. Whenever he ran out of money, he would paint and sell another one. He was especially needy between 1917 and 1919.

Grande Nude 1917, MOMA, New York

His most luscious nude is the delight of MOMA, New York.

Nude lying on her left side (“Alexandra”) 1918, private collection

The second one I saw only once in a chance encounter in New York. I fell in love with her elegance and bearing and made her the heroine of my novel "Konrad and Alexandra". - She was last seen when she was sold to an anonymous collector for US$ 26.8 Mill. at Christie's NY in February 2009....

München
Pinakothek der Modernen
Special Exhibition
Winter 2007

Max Beckmann (1884-1950)
“Exile in Amsterdam, 1937-1947 “

The Beckmann exibition in Munich 2007 was the first comprehensive presentation of two-thirds of Beckmann's work since the Degenerate Art Exhibiton in July 1937 in the same town. For me it became an eye-opener. I have seen single works by Beckmann in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Berlin but had never been able to connect these enigmatic yet intellectually challenging canvasses. [2007]

After having been declared a degenerate Artist in 1937 - Hitler called him a "cultural Bolshevik" - and 500 of his paintings had been confiscated, he and his second wife Mathilde (Quappi) von Kaulbach fled to Amsterdam, where they kept a very low profile. Beckmann barely suffered Holland - and vice versa - but he would spend ten of his most productive years there, suviving by selling an occasional painting through underground art dealers. He never returned to Germany. In 1948 he was finally admitted to the US. He died in New York in 1950.

Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait with Horn, 1938, 100x101cm
Neue Galerie, New York

Quappi and Beckmann have made it to Amsterdam, yet he hesitates to blow his horn. There will be no hiding from the murderers of his time.

Acrobats Triptych 1939, 200x170cm,
Saint Louis. MO, Museum of Art

Beckmann's diaries from these years are replete with accounts of his frequent visits to cabarets, carnivals, and the theater. On one level, these distractions offered temporary relief from the horrors of the war. On another level Beckmann regarded them as allegories of human existence. Thus, his paintings from these years - some of the most important works of his career - are abundant with subjects whose identity is both constructed and obscured by masquerade.

Artists with Vegetables, 1943, 150x115cm
Washington University, Saint Louis, MO

A spiritual seance among artist friends during an air raid. The burning city is seen through the window. Each offers a symbolic vegetable. The emotional relationship between the four is as cold as the room. Beckmann holds a mirror showing a diabolic face. He sees himself as the recorder of an increasingly surrealist world.

The Journey 1944, 145x90 cm, Private collection

By 1944 his situation had become hopeless. A train station. People try to flee, but the trains are occupied by German soldiers with raised arms. Quappi, his wife, walks forward determined to save them. A woman with splayed legs hails a ride to Paris. A nurse offers a bottle of mineral water and a vial of poison pills. Amid this confusion Beckmann sits inactive on a trunk labelled Berlin hiding his head in despair.

Cabins, 1948, 190x140cm,
Kunstsammlung Nord-Rhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

In 1948 Beckmann and Quappi were finally allowed to emigrate to America. Beckmann felt like a fish tied up on board of Katherine-Anne Porter's "Ship of Fools" – He could not adapt to the new country. Two years later Beckmann died of a heart attack in New York.

Rene Magritte, 1898-1967
Le chef dóeuvre ou Les mysteres de l'horizon

Frederick R. Weisman Museum
Los Angeles

1955

Two representatives of Belgian "Surrealism:” Magritte and Delvaux

Le chef d'doeuvre ou Les mysteres de l'horizon, 48x63 cm

Magritte was the more inventive and sophisticated, an allegorist with an unlimited imagination. His early work (1915-18) was in an impressionist style, followed by nudes in the futurist/cubist manner (1920-24). During WW II (1940-48) Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braques and Chiricos, a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period.- After 1948 he returned to Surrealism in earnest. More at: Wikipedia

Paul Delvaux (1897-1994)
Les Rendez-vous de'Ephese (The Meeting at Ephesus)

Foundation Delvaux,
St-Idesbald, Brussels

1973

Les Rendez-vous de'Ephese (The Meeting at Ephesus), 1973

By comparison Delvaux, despite that he reached an age of 94, preserved his visions of idealized virgins in settings of trains, street cars, parks and other fairy-tale fantasies often watched by bespectacled professors and photographers.
More at: Wikipedia and Foundation Delvaux in St-Idesbald.

Laura Hernandez
OMNIA,
Solo Exhibition of her Paintings and Sculptures

Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA)
Long Beach CA,

1998

Laura Hernandez was born in Oaxaca, Mexico on September 6, 1960. She has exhibited in Mexico, Germany, and the US. This was her first large solo exhibition in the US. Parts of it were later shown in Bochum, Germany. More on Laura's website

These photographs were taken by RWFG at MoLAA in Long Beach, CA in November 1998. Lacking a catalog and information on the artist, they are without captions. Omnia means "everything". The exhibition in Long Beach covered 2 large rooms and their connecting hallways, an area of about 12'000 square-feet. The 7 heads are each about 8 feet tall. They are made from papier mache in the fashion of Mexican pinatas and painted with oil paints and mixed media. Their models are the ancient "Olmec" heads of Mexico.

OMNIA at MoLAA, overview Nov 1998

Years after this event I searched for Laura in the internet. I found her through friends in Amsterdam. She had no website at the time and putting my photos at her disposal I urged her to set one up (viz. the link above). It was then that I found out that the container with the entire OMNIA show had been stolen from the Hapag-Loyd warehouse in Bremerhaven - uninsured.... Unconfirmed speculation has it that the objects disappeared in the Russian market. These photos are the only record of most of these heads and paintings.

The Moon-God and Blind-folded Man
Marc Hermans is admiring the painting

A friendship between Laura and us developed, whenever she passes through California she visits us in Pacific Palisades.

On her last visit Laura presented me with this watercolor, Amsterdam 1976.

Fredrick Weisman Foundation
Los Angeles

Between 2002 and 2008
Barbara worked as docent at the
Fredrick Weisman Museum

Entrance hall of the museum
The private museum can be visited by arrangement through:
Frederick R. Weisman Foundation

Gerhard Richter (1932-)
"Wald" (Forest), catalogue raisonne CR 892
12 untitled abstract paintings
oil on canvas, 197x132 cm,
2005

Special Exhibition 2007
"From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Paintings from Dresden."
Getty Center
Los Angeles

Privately owned individually, the 12 canvasses will revert to the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Richter's opus CR 892, named "Wald", is one of his most elegant and beautiful sets. If seen together in one room the 12 large canvasses make an overpowering impression of beauty and joy on the viewer. The small size of my reproductions cannot convey this impression.

The Getty Center in Los Angeles in 2006-2007 displayed the twelve paintings together with the romantic-spiritual paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) hung in one high room. A unique experience - of the sublime beauty of Richter's paintings.

CR 892,1and 2






CR 892,3 and 4






CR 892,5 and 6






CR 892,7 and 8






CR 892,9 and 10






CR 892, 11 and 12

Richter, in one of his more arrogant moments, claimed that "Wald" and a second large set of oils he named "Cage" (2006) were the end of painting as we know it. - There may be some truth to this provocative statement: If the End can be that beautiful, so be it.

For more on Richter's work see Gerhard Richter