The Kestnergesellschaft Presents New Drawings & Paintings by Daniel Richter

Written by Alfred Shroeder Saturday, 31 March 2012 21:48

Hanover, Germany -  The Kestnergesellschaft is proud to present "Daniel Richter: 1001 Nights", on view at the museum through November 6th. Daniel Richter (born 1962 in Eutin, now lives and works in Berlin) is one of Germany’s most important contemporary painters and has made his name with a hybrid of abstraction and figuration. The Kestnergesellschaft now presents a collection of Rickter's new paintings and drawings from 2008 to 2011 which deal with conflictual narrations and the vocabulary of the line. The starting point for these works is the collection of fantastical tales known as the "1001 Nights". Richter transforms these Arabic stories into menacing, fairytale-like scenarios that allude to an orientalism which has changed since 9/11. As the title indicates, Richter’s works contain an extra zero – a Ground Zero – that gives the fantastical element an eerie and at the same time very concrete touch.

These new works distance themselves from the tight crowds and urban settings of earlier paintings, and concentrate on a very few protagonists in fictive landscapes. Allegoric duels are played out amidst these scenarios: anarchy in contrast to the state, domination versus oppression, the nomadic in comparison to the sedentary. These irreconcilable situations are enriched by formal contradictions. The new works are determined by a linear vocabulary that originally belonged to the medium of the drawing, but is here applied in painterly terms. Richter composes the background of his canvases with color progressions that recall Morris Louis, and he delineates his figures by quoting Edvard Munch. At the same time he minimizes the authorial gesture by overlaying the expressive line with mechanical lines taken from the geological sciences: exact cartographic or seismological drawings simulate a natural environment in these works. Works by Daniel Richter can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Boros Collection in Berlin, the Falckenberg Collection in Hamburg, and elsewhere. Daniel Richter has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel, the Kunsthaus Hamburg, the Denver Art Museum and the Museum der Moderne Salzburg.


The Kestnergesellschaft, sometimes referred to as the Kestner society, was founded in 1916 with the goal of promoting the arts in Hanover, Germany. Its founders included the painter Wilhelm von Debschitz. In 1916, with the First World War raging, the Kestnergesellschaft was founded by citizens of Hanover, among them Hermann Bahlsen, August Madsack and Fritz Beindorff. Their goal was to bring internationally renowned and innovative artists and their current works to Hanover. The first exhibition, consisting of Max Liebermann’s new work, represented in 1916 the critical starting point for this concept. The first director, Paul Küppers, stated at the time that the aim was to present artworks which “do not simply function as a relaxing amusement but instead have a stimulating and – if necessary –provocative and scandalizing effect.” In 1936, the Kestnergesellschaft was closed under pressure from Hitler’s National Socialist government. The director at the time, Justus Bier, a Jew, presented artists Erich Heckel, Gerhard Marcks, Christian Rohlfs and August Macke – artists who only one year later were banned in the notorious “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich. Soon after the war, the new kestnergesellschaft was opened in the Warmbüchenstraßse by public service-minded Hanoverians in 1948, among them Hermann Bahlsen, Wilhelm Stichweh, Bernhard Sprengel and Günther Beindorff, the director of the Pelikan Works. In the 1990s, this building could no longer meet the high technical demands of modern exhibition operations, and the Kestnergesellschaft looked for a new home. The former Goseriede swimming pool complex in the city centre was chosen, and a team of internationally selected architects designed and oversaw the transformation into a modern exhibition house. In 1997 the Kestnergesellschaft moved into its new premises. The new gallery lies directly next to the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, Hanover's local newspaper. The gallery hit the headlines in 2005 when it exhibited a mud house created by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra featuring a room with mud floor reminiscent of Lake Maschsee. The list of artists whose works have been exhibited during the 75-year history reads like a "Who’s Who" in the history of 20th and 21st century art. Among them. Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters (both of whom were friends of the Kestnergesellschaft), Joan Miró (three times), Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso (twice), Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Rebecca Horn, Antoni Tàpies, Jonathan Meese, Thomas Ruff and Peter Doig. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.kestnergesellschaft.de

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