Gerhard Richter's Landscapes at David Zwirner: A Blurred History

Gerhard Richter's exhibition 'Landschaften' at David Zwirner in New York features 26 paintings from the 20th century, including the 1981 work 'Garmisch,' which depicts a Bavarian winter resort associated with the 1936 Olympics inaugurated by Adolf Hitler. The show includes loans from public and private collections, some unseen in the US for decades, and presents views of sea, mountain, field, and sky in Germany and Italy. Richter, now 94, is known for his blurry, photo-based paintings that grapple with the void left by 20th-century political and ideological cataclysms. The exhibition argues for how to live in the 21st century through Richter's equivocations and stutters, which the critic sees as models for pushing through cultural deadlock. Several landscapes are abstract pictures with squeegee-applied paint.