Benjamin Katz fotografiert Gerhard Richter
05.02. – 11.03.2012

Gerhard Richter, probably the best-known and most important German artist of our time, is celebrating his 80th birthday this February. And the art world is congratulating him. Exhibitions are being held in London, Paris, Berlin and Dresden to mark the occasion. The Kunstverein Bremerhaven is also joining in. But instead of Gerhard Richter’s works, the Kunstverein is presenting the artist himself, photographed by Benjamin Katz, who has been photographing the who’s who of the German art scene for many decades.
Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932. He began studying art at the art academy there in 1951 and became a master student in 1957. Under the pressure of not being able to paint what and how he wanted, he fled to the West in 1961 and continued his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where he later taught as a professor for more than two decades. His oeuvre includes a remarkable variety: color fields, ATLAS, RAF cycle, abstract painting, photography, painted-over photos, mirror objects. In 2007, a window he designed was inaugurated in Cologne Cathedral.
Gerhard Richter has exhibited several times in Bremerhaven. He was given three solo exhibitions in the Cabinet for Contemporary Art in 1971, 1973 and 1975/76, and in 1973 the art association presented his so-called ATLAS for the first time in Germany, a collection of photographs and drawings that will be shown in Dresden this spring. In addition, Gerhard Richter has had his own room in the art museum since 2008.
The career of such a well-known artist arouses curiosity, curiosity about how. You want to look behind the scenes. Benjamin Katz gives us this glimpse. Benjamin Katz is no stranger to Bremerhaven either. Born in Antwerp in 1939, he moved to Berlin in 1956, was a gallery owner for a while, and has lived as a photographer in Cologne since 1972. As a gallery owner and photographer, he has accompanied the careers of many artists for decades, many of whom he has a long-standing friendship with. Active as an artist in the art world, the “artist-photographer” succeeds in taking pictures of intimate proximity, relaxedness and familiarity. For the opening exhibition of the Kunstmuseum Bremerhaven in 2007, Benjamin Katz’s photos were the ideal complement to the new series of pictures “Remix” by the painter Georg Baselitz.
Now the Kunstverein is once again showing photographs by Benjamin Katz in the rooms of the Kunsthalle, which were made available by the Gerhard Richter Archive in Dresden.

Curated by Jürgen Wesseler.