Without Color presents an important group of paintings from Gerhard Richter's oeuvre: works that do without color-the material on which the painter ordinarily relies. The (non-)colors of black, white and gray have always played an important role in Richter's art. The broad, fascinating spectrum of these colorless paintings ranges from representational works based on black-and-white photographs to entirely abstract paintings and spans a period of four decades from the early 1960s to the present. The leading painter of our time needs no more than a palette of grays to create impressive works in the traditional genres of history painting, portraiture, landscape, and still life. He explores the fundamental aspects of painting in images composed of streaks of gray, overpainting, monochrome gray color fields and mirror mirrors. The outcome is a cross-section that incorporates everything painting can mean today-while focusing on the innermost essence of painting through the paradoxical renunciation of color. Exhibition schedule: museum franz gertsch, Burgdorf, February 5-May 8, 2005