By Paris Georgiou, Art & Culture Editor
Walking into the Fondation Louis Vuitton this week, I found myself standing before 275 works by Gerhard Richter, the largest retrospective ever dedicated to the 93-year-old German master. From October 17 through March 2, 2026, every single gallery in Frank Gehry’s architectural masterpiece is devoted to this artist who has spent six decades refusing to be pinned down.
The Journey Begins with Blur
The show opens chronologically with what Richter now considers his very first painting: Table (1962), a grey-on-grey image so blurred it’s almost not there. That technique of dragging a soft brush through wet paint became his signature in those early years, photo based paintings of family members, everyday objects, even a roll of toilet paper. There’s Tante Marianne (1965), his aunt holding him as a baby, an image that turned out to carry devastating historical weight when scholars later discovered she was killed under the Nazi euthanasia program. Richter’s ability to make personal photographs feel both intimate and distant is extraordinary. The 48 Portraits he painted for the 1972 Venice Biennale are here too, alongside his powerful October 18, 1977 series on loan from MoMA.
When Color Explodes
Then everything changes. Richter moves into abstraction and suddenly color bursts across the canvas. His famous squeegee technique produces these cascading waves, layers scraped and reworked until you get this incredible choreography of light.
Major pieces from the Foundation’s own collection anchor these rooms: Gudrun (1987), Wald (1990), and the monumental 4900 Colors (2007) with its 196 panels creating a chromatic explosion. There are the Birkenau paintings from 2014 too, where he tried to paint photographs from Auschwitz concentration camp but couldn’t, the subject was too terrible, so abstraction became the only way forward. Co-curators Nicholas Serota and Dieter Schwarz have arranged everything so you see how deference to chance runs through his entire career, from those early blurred accidents to his late abstract drips.
Glass, Steel, and Digital Experiments
But just when you think you understand his trajectory, Richter pivots again. The exhibition includes his sculptures in glass and steel, his digitally designed stained glass for Cologne Cathedral (11,263 colored squares generated by computer), and the Strip series he produced after announcing in 2017 that he’d stopped painting. Spread across 34 rooms, the show winds down with recent drawings on standard A4 paper—small, exquisite works where he uses solvent to dilute ink into unpredictable cloud-like shapes. He’s 93 and still working daily in his Cologne studio, just no longer with paint.
Why This Matters (And What We Need in Cyprus)
Hats off to Louis Vuitton for their continued patronage of blockbuster art exhibitions. After Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Hockney, they’ve given Richter the platform he deserves. It’s corporate support done right no compromise, full commitment. I can’t help thinking: Cyprus needs this. Imagine a Richter retrospective touring to Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca. Our art-loving public would be absolutely enlightened by an exhibition of this caliber. We have the appetite, we have the collectors, we have the cultural infrastructure what we need is the institutional will and sponsorship to bring world-class exhibitions to the island. Until then, if you can get to Paris before March 2, this is the show to see.
Exhibition Details:
- Where: Fondation Louis Vuitton, 8 Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, 75116 Paris
- When: October 17, 2025 – March 2, 2026
- Hours: Mon/Wed/Thurs 11am-8pm, Fri 11am-11pm, Sat/Sun 9am-9pm (Closed Tuesdays)
- Tickets: €16 full price, €10 reduced (under 26/students), €5 (under 18)
- Getting There: Metro Line 1 (Les Sablons), Bus 244, or Fondation shuttle from Place Charles de Gaulle-Étoile
Disclaimer: This is an independent editorial. All views, opinions, and commentary expressed herein are solely those of the editor and writer and do not constitute professional advice or endorsement. Press materials and exhibition content are originally derived from official Fondation Louis Vuitton communications. All images remain the property of and are courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton, Artist Gerhard Richter’s official website, and associated social media channels.
Tags: Gerhard Richter, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris Art Exhibitions, Contemporary Art, German Artists, Photo-Painting, Abstract Art, Art Retrospective, Squeegee Technique, Modern Masters, Art Patronage, Cyprus Art Scene
