DUSSELDORF, GERMANY.- The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen presents Gerhard Richter. In recent decades, Gerhard Richter – who was born in Dresden in 1932, and is one of the most important artists of our time – has produced a wideranging and complex œuvre. Richter’s painterly production encompasses both representational motifs and completely abstract images; gesticulative and intuitive works alternate with those purged of all emotion. Alongside work in various media, from overpaintings, Vermalungen, Verwischungen (based on blurring or smearing), to photography and graphics, Richter also produces sculpture. The central theme of all of his endeavors, however, is the medium of painting: its principles, limitations, and potentialities. At the same time, Richter poses the question of the degree to which painting and beholder are mutually implicated, and of the function accorded to the image: is it a prospect or vista, a gateway to another world, or perhaps a mirror, one in which viewers, in the end, confront themselves? In this context, the mirrors and panes of glass that are components of many important works beginning in the 1960s can be understood figuratively – as in the European tradition since the Late Renaissance – as a decisive agent of contrast for clarifying the function and significance of painting as a medium.