Henri Neuendorf interviews painter Markus Lüpertz, whose work is on view at Michael Werner Gallery, New York through July 7, 2017. Two concurrent retrospectives of Lüpertz’s work are on view in Washington D.C.: Markus Lüpertz: Threads of History at the Hirshhorn Museum (through September 10) and Markus Lüpertz at the Phillips Collection (through September 3).

Lüpertz remarks: “We’re [Lüpertz, Baselitz, Höckelmann, Penck, Kiefer, Immendorff] lucky to practice painting in its purest form. We’re not bound thematically. That’s the greatest mistake many painters have made, even today’s painters. They think they have to approach painting academically or politically. That’s all nonsense and it doesn’t preoccupy the painter. Abstraction was as an outstanding discovery, and we combined this abstraction with figuration, and that was a dimension that had never existed before in art.”