German painter Gerhard Richter, a giant in the worlds of both Photorealism and abstraction, is leaving Marian Goodman, his gallery of thirty-seven years, for David Zwirner. The ninety-year-old artist will have his first show with the globe-spanning megagallery at its New York flagship in March 2023. Zwirner has multiple galleries in New York, with outposts in London and Hong Kong; Richter’s connection to the gallery dates to 1994, when he showed at its New York space just months after the gallery’s launch. The artist’s relationship to the Zwirner family goes back even farther: Richter in 1968 had one of his first-ever solo shows at Cologne’s Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, run by David Zwirner’s father.
“To be able to work with Gerhard Richter is an immense honor and a great privilege,” acknowledged gallery owner David Zwirner in a statement. “Richter has, without a doubt, created one of the most conceptually complex and aesthetically heterogeneous oeuvres in the history of art. By avoiding adherence to any single ideology or dogma, Richter has been able to both celebrate and subvert the very act of painting. In the process, he has single-handedly opened up the medium to entirely new possibilities and investigations.”
Richter in a statement cited personal relationships as one reason for the change. “I have known David since his childhood as I had already in the 1960s worked closely with his father, Rudolf Zwirner,” he said. “I feel this represents a beautiful continuity across generations.”
Philipp Kaiser, president of Marian Goodman and a partner at the gallery, was sanguine about losing the German superstar to Zwirner. “We are very proud to have represented one of the most remarkable artists of our time for nearly 40 years,” he told Artnet News. “We acknowledge his decision at this stage of his life.”