PARABLES – Gerenot Richter on the 100th anniversary of his birth

The exhibition centres on the etchings of an artist whose distinctive visual language is characterised by precise observation of nature, art-historical references and an intense engagement with changes to the landscape. The exhibition will open on Saturday, 19 September 2026, at 5.00 pm with a vernissage and a concert.

Gerenot Richter was born on 5 December 1926 in Dresden. After studying art education and geography, he began teaching at the Institute for Art Education at Humboldt University in Berlin in 1955 and was appointed professor in 1971. His artistic career began with painting, but he soon turned almost exclusively to printmaking. Etching, with its wide range of possibilities, became his preferred medium. His works are characterised by a clear, detailed and realistic visual language.

Many of his ideas for images originated whilst sketching from life and were then further developed on the printing plate. He often combined his own experiences of nature with traditional pictorial worlds; artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Pieter Bruegel served as important points of reference for him. Thus, in his visual compositions, past and present, nature and art, reality and memory merge into one another.

His stays in Lusatia were particularly influential. The profound changes to the landscape caused by lignite mining became a key inspiration for his allegorical depictions. In works such as ‘Fragments’ from 1979, Richter juxtaposes a devastated Lusatian landscape with an ancient column capital. The result is imagery that speaks of beauty and transience, memory and loss, but also of humanity’s relationship with nature.

It is precisely this complexity that lends Richter’s etchings a remarkable relevance to this day. His works invite us to look more closely: at nature, at the traces of human intervention, and at those cultural memories that have become inscribed in landscapes and objects.

• Opening: 19 September 2026, 5 pm

Free admission.