Rare and never-before-shown works by Gerhard Richter on display in Dusseldorf exhibition

This is an exhibition that you could not only do anywhere else in the world for regional reasons, but above all because Gerhard Richter has been collected here since his very first beginnings in West Germany. So we have a collection that is as old as Gerhard Richter himself. He is 92 years old today, including very young collectors who collect him. Hidden treasures means that many of these pictures have actually never or extremely rarely been seen. We have a focus on the paintings in this exhibition. A total of over 120 works, of which over 80 paintings. Exactly half of them have never been seen or exhibited very, very rarely. We went to private collections in the Rhineland and were allowed into the holy rooms of the collectors and found works there that are basically known, but which have never been seen in an exhibition. The nice thing for me was that these works, the paintings, especially by Gerhard Richter, often have a social function in the families. For example, they hang over the dining table. This means, of course, that in the second step the whole family gathers for all important occasions at the dining table. And of course that also means that they gather under or in front of the picture of Gerhard Richter. These are very exciting and touching moments. Gerhard Richter supported this project from the beginning and found it very good. I was with him last week and brought him the catalogue. And of course he was very happy about that. I think he had a lot of fun.