Join us for Gerhard Richter’s Uncle Rudi: Hidden History talk, part of the “Close-up: Art” series at Centre Tchèque Paris on Tuesday, 17 February 2026 at 7 pm.
Gerhard Richter, “Onkel Rudi”, 1965, oil on canvas, 87 x 49 cm, detail. Courtesy of the artist and Lidice Art Collection
René Block, Miloslav Vorlíček
The Lidice Art Collection, in collaboration with the Fondation Louis Vuitton, presents a public program investigating the complex provenance and survival of Gerhard Richter's seminal 1965 painting, Onkel Rudi. This event coincides with the major Gerhard Richter retrospective currently on view at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, where the artwork serves as a focal point.
In 1967, curator René Block organised the Hommage à Lidice exhibition in West Berlin. It was the first exhibition in West Germany to critically address Nazi history through contemporary art. Block secured donations from artists including Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Joseph Beuys to support a solidarity collection for Lidice, the Czech village destroyed by the Nazis in 1942. Despite the Iron Curtain, the works reached Czechoslovakia in July 1968. Following the Soviet-led invasion one month later, Onkel Rudi—a depiction of Richter's uncle in a Wehrmacht uniform—disappeared from public view.
The program explores the clandestine preservation of the painting and its eventual "rediscovery" in 1993. The evening features a conversation between René Block, the gallerist who facilitated the original donation, and Miloslav Vorlíček, curator of the Lidice Art Collection. The discussion addresses the investigation into the work's hidden survival as a story of resilience against institutional censorship. It examines how a single painting embodies the ethics of collecting and the struggle for artistic freedom behind the Iron Curtain.
The event will be held in English. The Czech Centre Paris and the Goethe-Institut Paris support this public program.
