This book is an important documentation of the artist's life and work and attempts to portray carefully selected moments from the history of the artist Gerhard Richter as a post-modern oeuvre of German art after World War II. It is not concerned with entirety, but with fractions, with paradigmatic changes and the constantly altering processes in artistic production.

Volume 1 is a record of the exhibition (winter 93/94 in Bonn) with 97 representative works from 1962 to 1993. Volume 2 contains essays by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, who has studied Richter's work since 1977, and an interview with the artist in 1986. Observations by Peter Gidal, experimental film-maker and theoretician, on "Infinite Finitude" and by Birgit Pelzer, Professor of Modern Aesthetics and Philosophy, on "the tragic desire" in Richter's works round off this volume. Volume 3 gives a summary of the entire works of Gerhard Richter from 1962 till today. Approximately 2000 works are illustrated on a scale of 1:50.