Series: Gerhard Richter. Catalogue Raisonné No. 1. Edited by Dietmar Elger for the Gerhard Richter Archiv, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. The launch of a large-scale publishing project: the five-volume catalogue raisonné of Gerhard Richter’s paintings and sculptures. From 1962 to the present, scientifically researched and with color plates and illustrations. Gerhard Richter’s oeuvre embraces in excess of three thousand individual works. Over a period of five decades he has created a stylistically heterogeneous, complex body of work that testifies to his status as the most important living artist of our time. This long-awaited first volume of the catalogue raisonné is being released on the occasion of the artist’s eightieth birthday in February 2012. Dietmar Elger, director of the Gerhard Richter Archive at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, has spent years researching and preparing this publication. The five-volume catalogue raisonné of all of Richter’s paintings and sculptures will be published over the next seven years. Aside from the richly colored illustrations, many of them full-page, it includes full technical details, information about the artist’s handwritten notes, and the provenance, bibliography, and exhibitions of each individual work. This information is supplemented by commentary, quotes, and comparison images. The first volume encompasses the works Gerhard Richter assigned numbers 1 to 198, covering the years 1962 to 1968. A total of 385 paintings and sculptures are listed, including more than thirty of which were previously unknown.