Hans Richter: Encounters

(Los Angeles—March 12, 2013)The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Hans Richter: Encounters, the first museum exhibition to examine the evolution of German artist Hans Richter’s practice based on his interaction with other artists, writers, filmmakers, and composers. In Richter’s most significant retrospective since the 1980s, the multidisciplinary exhibition showcases 175 works by the artist, complemented by approximately sixty works by his contemporaries, including drawings, paintings, sculptures, scrolls, photographs, architectural models, ready-mades, wall reliefs, and films.

Richter helped to bring about groundbreaking advances in twentieth-century modernism, from expressionism and Dadaism to constructivism and surrealism to avant-garde film that would extend his influence to the New American Cinema of the 1960s. Timothy O. Benson, Curator of the Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at LACMA, says, “As a polymath draftsman, printmaker, painter, filmmaker, and writer, Hans Richter was above all an artist of social engagement, and the force and meaning of his art were attained through his interaction with those around him. It is ironic that Richter is not better known within the canon of modernism because he is so central to it.”

The installation for Hans Richter: Encounters is designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners Architects, who most recently designed the galleries for Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and his Legacy at LACMA. The exhibition is the most recent example of LACMA’s commitment to its robust Art+Film program, which has included noteworthy exhibitions such as Stanley Kubrick, Masterworks of Expressionist Cinema: Caligari and Metropolis, Tim Burton, and Dalí & Film. Following its debut at LACMA, Hans Richter: Encounters will travel to the Centre Pompidou-Metz (September 29, 2013—February 24, 2014) and Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (March 27—June 30, 2014).

Image credits:

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Untitled (Dada Head), 1920, Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de creation industrielle, purchased in public sale, 2003, © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Photo © CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY, by Georges Meguerditchian

László Moholy-Nagy, Portrait (Ellen Frank), 1929, © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Photo: Galerie Berinson, Berlin

Hans Richter, Schlittenfahrt (Skating), c. 1915, Kunsthaus Zürich, © 2013 Hans Richter Estate, Photo: © Kunsthaus Zürich

André Kertèsz, La fourchette (Fork), 1928 (printed later), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of Private Collection, Los Angeles © 2013 Estate of André Kertész/Higher Pictures, Photo © 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA