At the opening of a new exhibition hall in the Polish town of Oświęcim last week, a curious crowd of visitors seemed impressed with the purpose-built architectural structure: a minimalist, Aldo Rossi-like building that feels more like a tomb than a gallery. They initially remained more sceptical of the artworks inside, however. “Is it a painting or not?”, some people asked each other. “Take a closer look – can you make out what it’s made of?”
Obscurity is in the essence of German artist Gerhard Richter’s Birkenau cycle, arguably the single most important artwork by one of the most influential artists alive today. It is hard to look beyond the surface of these four 260 x 200cm pictures, which the artist covered with thick layers of paint that were then scratched off, reapplied and scratched off again multiple times with a squeegee, before veiling them in black, grey, green and red. You can stand in front of them for hours before you start to make out the more figurative paintings underneath the abstraction, depicting several naked bodies, some of them lifeless.
