The founding of the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery in Munich in 1968 marked the beginning of a forum of contemporary art that over the years has presented a great many artists in their first solo exhibitions in Germany, or indeed in their first solo exhibitions at all. The list includes, for example, such artists as Jenny Holzer, Günther Förg, Dan Graham, Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, James Coleman, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Katharina Fritsch, Thomas Ruff, Anri Sala.

One of the focal points of the gallery's activities during the 1970s was the presentation of Concept Art with such artists as Douglas Huebler, Daniel Buren, Ian Wilson, Lawrence Weiner, On Kawara. Conceptual content, the questioning of the correlation between art and reality and reflection upon the context of art are to this day the common, cross-generation, cross-media link between the artists represented by the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery. The texts and compositions of Martin Creed, represented by the gallery since 2001, likewise follow in this tradition: subtle and frugal interventions in spatial relationships that bring about a lasting change in our perception of reality.

It was during the 1980s, following the inclusion of painting and photography in the gallery's programme, that the representational and the narratory, while retaining a critical approach to the medium, gained in significance. The photographic works of Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff, and also the films of Rodney Graham, not only fascinate the viewer through the depictive quality achievable with their respective medium but also keep themselves at a rational, analytical distance from him. Since the eighties the Düsseldorf School of Photography has been one of the emphases of the gallery programme and was enhanced by the young Chinese artist Chen Wei, who enriches the programme with his social critical photo settings.

Besides cultivating a programme of long-standing artists, the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery has a decisive interest in exploring new approaches in the contemporary art scene and regularly presenting the works of young artists. Since 2000, for example, one of the accents has been on the most recent trends in painting such as on Florian Süssmayr's inventories of urban realities, the painterly narrations of Latvian Jānis Avotiņš or Toulu Hassanis examination of materiality and surface qualities of painting and its accessories and subsequently of systems of order and their perturbation. Another emphasis of the gallery programme derives from interest in the East European art scene. Since 2005 the gallery has been representing the London-based Polish artist Goshka Macuga.