Gerhard Richter
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Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as
photorealistic Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be ...
paintings, and also photographs and
glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling ( quenching ...
pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction.


Personal life


Childhood and education

Richter was born in Hospital Dresden-Neustadt in
Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
, Saxony, and grew up in Reichenau (now
Bogatynia Bogatynia (; German: ''Reichenau in Sachsen'') is a town in Zgorzelec County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. As of December 2021, the town has a population of 16,460. Geography The municipal area forms Poland's "Turoszów p ...
, Poland), and in Waltersdorf (Zittauer Gebirge), in the
Upper Lusatia Upper Lusatia (german: Oberlausitz ; hsb, Hornja Łužica ; dsb, Górna Łužyca; szl, Gōrnŏ Łużyca; pl, Łużyce Górne or ''Milsko''; cz, Horní Lužice) is a historical region in Germany and Poland. Along with Lower Lusatia to the ...
n countryside, where his father worked as a village teacher. Gerhard's mother, Hildegard Schönfelder, gave birth to him at the age of 25. Hildegard's father, Ernst Alfred Schönfelder, at one time was considered a gifted pianist. Ernst moved the family to Dresden after taking up the family enterprise of brewing and eventually went bankrupt. Once in Dresden, Hildegard trained as a bookseller, and in doing so realized a passion for literature and music. Gerhard's father, Horst Richter, was a mathematics and physics student at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. The two were married in 1931. After struggling to maintain a position in the new
National Socialist Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
education system, Horst found a position in Reichenau. Gerhard's younger sister, Gisela, was born there in 1936. Horst and Hildegard were able to remain primarily apolitical due to Reichenau's location in the countryside. Horst, being a teacher, was eventually forced to join the National Socialist Party. He never became an avid supporter of Nazism, and was not required to attend party rallies. In 1942, Gerhard was conscripted into the ''
Deutsches Jungvolk The ''Deutsches Jungvolk in der Hitlerjugend'' (; DJ, also DJV; German for "German Youngsters in the Hitler Youth") was the separate section for boys aged 10 to 13 of the Hitler Youth organisation in Nazi Germany. Through a programme of outdoor a ...
'', but by the end of the war he was still too young to be an official member of the
Hitler Youth The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. ...
. In 1943, Hildegard moved the family to Waltersdorf, and was later forced to sell her piano. Two brothers of Hildegard died as soldiers in the war and a sister, who was schizophrenic, was starved to death in the Nazi euthanasia program. Richter left school after 10th grade and apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, before studying at the
Dresden Academy of Fine Arts The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (German ''Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden''), often abbreviated HfBK Dresden or simply HfBK, is a vocational university of visual arts located in Dresden, Germany. The present institution is the produc ...
. In 1948, he finished vocational high school in
Zittau Zittau ( hsb, Žitawa, dsb, Žytawa, pl, Żytawa, cs, Žitava, Upper Lusatian Dialect: ''Sitte''; from Slavic "'' rye''" (Upper Sorbian and Czech: ''žito'', Lower Sorbian: ''žyto'', Polish: ''żyto'')) is the southeasternmost city in the Ge ...
, and, between 1949 and 1951, successively worked as an apprentice with a sign painter and as a painter. In 1950, his application for study at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts was rejected as "too bourgeois". He finally began his studies at the Academy in 1951. His teachers there were
Karl von Appen Karl von Appen (12 May 1900, Düsseldorf - 22 August 1981, Berlin) was a German stage designer and member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists. Theatre * 1954: ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' by Bertolt Brecht; directed by Brecht at ...
, and
Will Grohmann Will Grohmann (born 4 December 1887 in Bautzen; died 6 May 1968 in Berlin) was a German art critic and art historian specialized in German Expressionism and abstract art. He was known as the "godfather of modernism". Life and work From 1908 to ...
.


Relationships

Richter married Marianne Eufinger in 1957; she gave birth to his first daughter. He married his second wife, the sculptor
Isa Genzken Isa Genzken (born 27 November 1948) is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin. Her primary media are sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including concrete, plaster, wood and textile. She also works with photograp ...
, in 1982. Richter had two sons and a daughter with his third wife,
Sabine Moritz Sabine Moritz (born 1969 in Quedlinburg) is a German painter and graphic designer. She is married to Gerhard Richter. Life and work Sabine Moritz was born as the daughter of a chemist in East Germany. From 1973 to 1981 she lived together with he ...
after they were married in 1995.


Early career

In the early days of his career, he prepared a wall painting (''Communion with Picasso'', 1955) for the
refectory A refectory (also frater, frater house, fratery) is a dining room, especially in monasteries, boarding schools and academic institutions. One of the places the term is most often used today is in graduate seminaries. The name derives from the Lat ...
of his Academy of Arts as part of his BA Another mural entitled ''Lebensfreude'' (Joy of life) followed at the
German Hygiene Museum The German Hygiene Museum (german: Deutsches Hygiene-Museum) is a medical museum in Dresden, Germany. It conceives itself today as a "forum for science, culture and society". It is a popular venue for events and exhibitions, and is among the mo ...
for his diploma. It was intended to produce an effect "similar to that of wallpaper or tapestry". From 1957 to 1961 Richter worked as a master trainee in the academy and took commissions for the then state of East Germany. During this time, he worked intensively on murals like ' (Workers' struggle), on oil paintings (e.g. portraits of the East German actress
Angelica Domröse Angelica Domröse (; born April 4, 1941, in Berlin) is a German actress, who became famous in the role of Paula in Heiner Carow's film '' The Legend of Paul and Paula''. Her Mediterranean appearance is the result of her biological father being a ...
and of Richter's first wife Ema), on various self-portraits and on a panorama of Dresden with the neutral name ' (Townscape, 1956). Together with his wife Marianne, Richter escaped from
East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...
to
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
two months before the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Both his wall paintings in the Academy of Arts and the Hygiene Museum were then painted over for ideological reasons. Much later, after German reunification, two "windows" of the wall painting ''Joy of life'' (1956) would be uncovered in the stairway of the German Hygiene Museum, but these were later covered over when it was decided to restore the Museum to its original 1930 state. In West Germany Richter began to study at the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová ...
under
Karl Otto Götz Karl Otto Götz (22 February 1914 – 19 August 2017) often simply called K.O. Götz, was a German artist, filmmaker, draughtsman, printmaker, writer and professor of art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He was one of the oldest living and ac ...
together with
Sigmar Polke Sigmar Polke (13 February 1941 – 10 June 2010) was a German painter and photographer. Polke experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matters and materials. In the 1970s, he concentrated on photography, returning to paint in the 1980s ...
, Werner Hilsing,
HA Schult HA Schult, born Hans-Jürgen Schult on 24 June 1939 in Parchim, Mecklenburg is a German installation, happening and conceptual artist known primarily for his object and performance art and more specifically his work with garbage. He is one of ...
,
Kuno Gonschior Kuno Gonschior (10 September 1933 in Wanne-Eickel – 16 March 2010 in Bochum) was a German painter. From 1957 to 1961, Gonschior studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1959, he was one of the first students of Karl Otto Götz, ...
, Hans Erhard Walther, Konrad Lueg and
Gotthard Graubner Gotthard Graubner (13 June 1930 – 24 May 2013) was a German painter, born in Erlbach, in Saxony, Germany. Graubner studied at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts in Germany, be ...
. With Polke and (pseudonym Lueg) he introduced the term ' (Capitalistic Realism) as an anti-style of art, appropriating the pictorial shorthand of advertising. This title also referred to the realist style of art known as
Socialist Realism Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is c ...
, then the official art doctrine of the Soviet Union, but it also commented upon the consumer-driven art doctrine of western capitalism. Richter taught at the
Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg The ''Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg)'' is the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. It dates to 1767, when it was called the ''Hamburger Gewerbeschule''; later it became known as ''Landeskunstschule Hamburg''. The main build ...
and the
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design NSCAD University, also known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design or NSCAD, is a public art university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution that offers bachelor's and master's degrees. The univ ...
as a visiting professor; he returned to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1971, where he worked as a professor for over 15 years. In 1983, Richter resettled from Düsseldorf to Cologne, where he still lives and works today. In 1996, he moved into a studio designed by architect Thiess Marwede.


Art


Photo-paintings and the "blur"

Richter created various painting pictures from black-and-white photographs during the 1960s and early 1970s, basing them on a variety of sources: newspapers and books, sometimes incorporating their captions, (as in ''Helga Matura'' (1966)); private snapshots; aerial views of towns and mountains, (''Cityscape Madrid'' (1968) and Alps (1968)); seascapes (1969–70); and a large multipart work made for the German Pavilion in the 1972
Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
. For '' Forty-eight Portraits'' (1971–72), he chose mainly the faces of composers such as Gustav Mahler and
Jean Sibelius Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often ...
, and of writers such as
H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''
Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...
.Gerhard Richter
MoMA , The Collection
From around 1964, Richter made a number of portraits of dealers, collectors, artists and others connected with his immediate professional circle. Richter's two portraits of ''Betty'', his daughter, were made in 1977 and 1988 respectively; the three portraits titled ''IG'' were made in 1993 and depict the artist's second wife,
Isa Genzken Isa Genzken (born 27 November 1948) is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin. Her primary media are sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including concrete, plaster, wood and textile. She also works with photograp ...
. ''Lesende'' (1994) portrays
Sabine Moritz Sabine Moritz (born 1969 in Quedlinburg) is a German painter and graphic designer. She is married to Gerhard Richter. Life and work Sabine Moritz was born as the daughter of a chemist in East Germany. From 1973 to 1981 she lived together with he ...
, whom Richter married in 1995, shown absorbed in the pages of a magazine.Gerhard Richter ''Portraits'', 26 February – 31 May 2009
National Portrait Gallery, London
Many of his realist paintings reflect on the history of Nazism, creating paintings of family members who had been members, as well as victims, of the Nazi party. From 1966, as well as those given to him by others, Richter began using photographs he had taken as the basis for portraits. In 1975, on the occasion of a show in Düsseldorf,
Gilbert & George Gilbert Prousch, sometimes referred to as Gilbert Proesch (born 17 September 1943 in San Martin de Tor, Italy), and George Passmore (born 8 January 1942 in Plymouth, United Kingdom), are two artists who work together as the collaborative art d ...
commissioned Richter to make a portrait of them. Richter began making prints in 1965. He was most active before 1974, only completing sporadic projects since that time. In the period 1965–1974, Richter made most of his prints (more than 100), of the same or similar subjects in his paintings.Gerhard Richter, ''Elizabeth I'' (1966)
Tate Collection
He has explored a variety of photographic printmaking processes –
screenprint Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh ...
, photolithography, and
collotype Collotype is a gelatin-based photographic printing process invented by Alphonse Poitevin in 1855 to print images in a wide variety of tones without the need for halftone screens. The majority of collotypes were produced between the 1870s and 1 ...
– in search of inexpensive mediums that would lend a "non-art" appearance to his work. He stopped working in print media in 1974, and began painting from photographs he took himself. While elements of landscape painting appeared initially in Richter's work early on in his career in 1963, the artist began his independent series of landscapes in 1968 after his first vacation, an excursion that landed him besotted with the terrain of Corsica. Landscapes have since emerged as an independent work group in his oeuvre. According to Dietmar Elger, Richter's landscapes are understood within the context of traditional of German Romantic Painting. They are compared to the work of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840). Friedrich is foundational to German landscape painting. Each artist spent formative years of their lives in
Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
. ''Große Teyde-Landschaft'' (1971) takes its imagery from similar holiday snapshots of the volcanic regions of
Tenerife Tenerife (; ; formerly spelled ''Teneriffe'') is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands. It is home to 43% of the total population of the archipelago. With a land area of and a population of 978,100 inhabitants as of Janu ...
. ''Atlas'' was first exhibited in 1972 at the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst in Utrecht under the title ''Atlas der Fotos und Skizzen'', it included 315 parts. The work has continued to expand, and was exhibited later in full form at the
Lenbachhaus The Lenbachhaus () is a building housing an art museum in Munich's '' Kunstareal''. The building The Lenbachhaus was built as a Florentine-style villa for the painter Franz von Lenbach between 1887 and 1891 by Gabriel von Seidl and was expa ...
in Munich in 1989, the
Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy ...
in Cologne in 1990, and at
Dia Art Foundation Dia Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumb ...
in New York in 1995. ''Atlas'' continues as an ongoing, encyclopedic work composed of approximately 4,000 photographs, reproductions or cut-out details of photographs and illustrations, grouped together on approximately 600 separate panels. In 1972, Richter embarked on a ten-day trip to
Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...
, his friend
Hanne Darboven Hanne Darboven (29 April 1941 – 9 March 2009) was a German conceptual artist, best known for her large-scale minimalist installations consisting of handwritten tables of numbers. Early life and career Darboven was born in 1941 in Munich. She g ...
was meant to accompany him, but instead he traveled alone. His intention was to experience and record the desolate arctic landscape. In 1976, four large paintings, each titled ''Seascape'' emerged from the Greenland photographs. In 1982 and 1983, Richter made a series of paintings of ''Candles'' and ''Skulls'' that relate to a longstanding tradition of still life '' memento mori'' painting. Each composition is most commonly based on a photograph taken by Richter in his own studio. Influenced by old master vanitas painters such as
Georges de La Tour Georges de La Tour (13 March 1593 – 30 January 1652) was a French Baroque painter, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which was temporarily absorbed into France between 1641 and 1648. He painted mostly religious chia ...
and
Francisco de Zurbarán Francisco de Zurbarán ( , ; baptized 7 November 1598 – 27 August 1664) was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nickname "Spanish ...
, the artist began to experiment with arrangements of candles and skulls placed in varying degrees of natural light, sitting atop otherwise barren tables. The Candle paintings coincided with his first large-scale abstract paintings, and represent the complete antithesis to those vast, colorful and playfully meaningless works. Richter has made only 27 of these still lifes.
Sarah Thornton Sarah L. Thornton (born 1965) is a writer, ethnographer and sociologist of culture. Thornton has authored three books and many articles about artists, the art market, technology and design, the history of music technology, dance clubs, raves ...
(8 October 2011)
Selling Gerhard Richter – The bold standard
''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...
''
In 1995, the artist marked the 50th anniversary of the allied bombings of his hometown Dresden during the Second World War. His solitary candle was reproduced on a monumental scale and placed overlooking the River Elbe as a symbol of rejuvenation. In a 1988 series of 15 ambiguous photo paintings entitled ''18 October 1977'', he depicted four members of the
Red Army Faction The Red Army Faction (RAF, ; , ),See the section "Name" also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang (, , active 1970–1998), was a West German far-left Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla group founded in 1970. The ...
(RAF), a German left-wing militant organization. These paintings were created from black-and-white newspaper and police photos. Three RAF members were found dead in their prison cells on 18 October 1977 and the cause of their deaths was the focus of widespread controversy. In the late 1980s, Richter had begun to collect images of the group which he used as the basis for the 15 paintings exhibited for the first time in Krefeld in 1989. The paintings were based on an official portrait of
Ulrike Meinhof Ulrike Marie Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author ...
during her years as a radical journalist; on photographs of the arrest of
Holger Meins Holger Klaus Meins (26 October 1941 – 9 November 1974) was a German cinematography student who joined the Red Army Faction (RAF) in the early 1970s and died on hunger strike in prison. As a revolutionary Meins became an important member of t ...
; on police shots of
Gudrun Ensslin Gudrun Ensslin (; 15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a German far-left terrorist and founder of the West German far-left militant group Red Army Faction (, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang). After becoming involved with co-foun ...
in prison; on
Andreas Baader Berndt Andreas Baader (6 May 1943 – 18 October 1977) was one of the first leaders of the West German left-wing militant organization Red Army Faction (RAF), also commonly known as ''the Baader-Meinhof Group''. Life Andreas Baader was born i ...
's bookshelves and the record player to conceal his gun; on the dead figures of Meinhof, Ensslin, and Baader; and on the funeral of Ensslin, Baader, and
Jan-Carl Raspe Jan-Carl Raspe (24 July 1944 – 18 October 1977) was a member of the German militant group, the Red Army Faction (RAF). Early life Raspe was born in Seefeld in Tirol (then Germany, now Austria). He was described as gentle but had difficulty co ...
. Since 1989, Richter has worked on creating new images by dragging wet paint over photographs. The photographs, not all taken by Richter himself, are mostly snapshots of daily life: family vacations, pictures of friends, mountains, buildings and streetscapes. Richter was flying to New York on 11 September 2001, but due to the
9/11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerci ...
, including on the
World Trade Center World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association. World Trade Center may refer to: Buildings * List of World Trade Centers * World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...
, his plane was diverted to
Halifax, Nova Scotia Halifax is the capital and largest municipality of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the largest municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of the 2021 Census, the municipal population was 439,819, with 348 ...
. A few years later, he made one small painting specifically about the planes crashing into the
World Trade Center World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association. World Trade Center may refer to: Buildings * List of World Trade Centers * World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...
. In ''September: A History Painting by Gerhard Richter'', Robert Storr situates Richter's 2005 painting ''September'' within a brand of anti-ideological thought that he finds throughout Richter's work. He considers how the ubiquitous photographic documentation of 11 September attacks affects the uniqueness of one's distinct remembrance of the events, and he offers a valuable comparison to Richter's ''18 October 1977'' cycle. In the 2000s, Richter made a number of works that dealt with scientific phenomena. In 2003, he produced several paintings with the same title: ''Silicate''. Large oil-on-canvas pieces, these show latticed rows of light- and dark-grey blobs whose shapes quasi-repeat as they race across the frame, their angle modulating from painting to painting. They depict a photo, published in the ''
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' (; ''FAZ''; "''Frankfurt General Newspaper''") is a centre-right conservative-liberal and liberal-conservativeHans Magnus Enzensberger: Alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen' (in German). ''Deutschland Radio'', ...
'', of a computer-generated simulacrum of reflections from the silicon dioxide found in insects' shells.


Abstract work

Coming full-circle from his early ''Table (1962)'' in which he cancelled his photorealist image with haptic swirls of grey paint,Gerhard Richter, ''Abstraktes Bild 798-3'' (1993)
Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 8 May 2012
in 1969, Richter produced the first of a group of grey
monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...
s that consist exclusively of the textures resulting from different methods of paint application. In 1976, Richter first gave the title ''Abstract Painting'' to one of his works. By presenting a painting without even a few words to name and explain it, he felt he was "letting a thing come, rather than creating it." In his abstract pictures, Richter builds up cumulative layers of non-representational painting, beginning with brushing big swaths of primary color onto canvas. The paintings evolve in stages, based on his responses to the picture's progress: the incidental details and patterns that emerge. Throughout his process, Richter uses the same techniques he uses in his representational paintings, blurring and scraping to veil and expose prior layers.Gerhard Richter: ''Abstract Painting (809–3)'', 1994
ate Ate or ATE may refer to: Organizations * Active Training and Education Trust, a not-for-profit organization providing "Superweeks", holidays for children in the United Kingdom * Association of Technical Employees, a trade union, now called the Nat ...
, London
From the mid-1980s, Richter began to use a homemade
squeegee A squeegee or squilgee is a tool with a flat, smooth rubber blade, used to remove or control the flow of liquid on a flat surface. It is used for cleaning and in printing. The earliest written references to squeegees date from the mid-19th cent ...
to rub and scrape the paint that he had applied in large bands across his canvases. In an interview with Benjamin H.D. Buchloch in 1986, Richter was asked about his "Monochrome Grey Pictures and Abstract Pictures" and their connection with the artists
Yves Klein Yves Klein (; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein w ...
and
Ellsworth Kelly Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 – December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, c ...
. The following are Richter's answers:
The Grey Pictures were done at a time when there were monochrome paintings everywhere. I painted them nonetheless. ... Not Kelly, but Bob Ryman,
Brice Marden Brice Marden (born October 15, 1938) is an American artist generally described as Minimalist, although his work may be hard to categorize. He lives and works in New York City; Tivoli, New York; Hydra, Greece; and Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania. Lif ...
, Alan Charlton,
Yves Klein Yves Klein (; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein w ...
and many others.
In the 1990s the artist began to run his squeegee up and down the canvas in an ordered fashion to produce vertical columns that take on the look of a wall of planks. Richter's abstract work and its illusion of space developed out of his incidental process: an accumulation of spontaneous, reactive gestures of adding, moving, and subtracting paint. Despite unnatural palettes, spaceless sheets of color, and obvious trails of the artist's tools, the abstract pictures often act like windows through which we see the landscape outside. As in his representational paintings, there is an equalization of illusion and paint. In those paintings, he reduces worldly images to mere incidents of Art. Similarly, in his abstract pictures, Richter exalts spontaneous, intuitive mark-making to a level of spatial logic and believability. ''Firenze'' continues a cycle of 99 works conceived in the autumn of 1999 and executed in the same year and thereafter. The series of overpainted photographs, or übermalte Fotographien, consists of small paintings bearing images of the city of Florence, created by the artist as a tribute to the music of Steve Reich and the work of Contempoartensemble, a Florence-based group of musicians. After 2000, Richter made a number of works that dealt with scientific phenomena, in particular, with aspects of reality that cannot be seen by the naked eye. In 2006, Richter conceived six paintings as a coherent group under the title ''Cage'', named after the American avant-garde composer John Cage. The ''Cage'' paintings are large works constructed from intersecting fields, lines, and swaths of uneven smears that reflect the broad squeegee tool which Richter drags across the canvases, before removing areas of paint to generate a subtractive method of concealing and revealing variegated layers and patches. In May 2002, Richter photographed 216 details of his abstract painting no. 648-2, from 1987. Working on a long table over a period of several weeks, Richter combined these 10 x 15 cm details with 165 texts on the Iraq war, published in the German ''
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' (; ''FAZ''; "''Frankfurt General Newspaper''") is a centre-right conservative-liberal and liberal-conservativeHans Magnus Enzensberger: Alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen' (in German). ''Deutschland Radio'', ...
'' newspaper on 20 and 21 March. This work was published in 2004 as a book entitled ''War Cut''. In November 2008, Richter began a series in which he applied ink droplets to wet paper, using alcohol and lacquer to extend and retard the ink's natural tendency to bloom and creep. The resulting ''November'' sheets are regarded as a significant departure from his previous watercolours in that the pervasive soaking of ink into wet paper produced double-sided works. Sometimes the uppermost sheets bled into others, generating a sequentially developing series of images. In a few cases Richter applied lacquer to one side of the sheet, or drew pencil lines across the patches of colour.


Color chart paintings

As early as 1966, Richter had made paintings based on colour charts, using the rectangles of colour as found objects in an apparently limitless variety of hue; these culminated in 1973–4 in a series of large-format pictures such as ''256 Colours''. Richter painted three series of Color Chart paintings between 1966 and 1974, each series growing more ambitious in their attempt to create through their purely arbitrary arrangement of colors. The artist began his investigations into the complex permutations of color charts in 1966, with a small painting entitled ''10 Colors''. The charts provided anonymous and impersonal source material, a way for Richter to disassociate color from any traditional, descriptive, symbolic or expressive end. When he began to make these paintings, Richter had his friend Blinky Palermo randomly call out colors, which Richter then adopted for his work. Chance thus plays its role in the creation of his first series. Returning to color charts in the 1970s, Richter changed his focus from the readymade to the conceptual system, developing mathematical procedures for mixing colours and chance operations for their placement. The range of the colors he employed was determined by a mathematical system for mixing the primary colors in graduated amounts. Each color was then randomly ordered to create the resultant composition and form of the painting. Richter's second series of Color Charts was begun in 1971 and consisted of only five paintings. In the final series of Color Charts which preoccupied Richter throughout 1973 and 1974, additional elements to this permutational system of color production were added in the form of mixes of a light grey, a dark gray and later, a green. Richter's ''4900 Colours'' from 2007 consisted of bright monochrome squares that have been randomly arranged in a grid pattern to create stunning fields of kaleidoscopic color. It was produced at the same time he developed his design for the south transept window of
Cologne Cathedral Cologne Cathedral (german: Kölner Dom, officially ', English: Cathedral Church of Saint Peter) is a Catholic cathedral in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archdiocese o ...
. ''4900 Colours'' consists of 196 panels in 25 colors that can be reassembled in 11 variations – from a single expansive surface to multiple small-format fields. Richter developed ''Version II'' – 49 paintings, each of which measures 97 by 97 centimeters – especially for the Serpentine Gallery.


Sculpture

Richter began to use glass in his work in 1967, when he made ''Four Panes of Glass''. These plain sheets of glass could tilt away from the poles on which they were mounted at an angle that changed from one installation to the next. In 1970, he and Blinky Palermo jointly submitted designs for the sports facilities for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. For the front of the arena, they proposed an array of glass windows in twenty-seven different colors; each color would appear fifty times, with the distribution determined randomly. In 1981, for a two-person show with Georg Baselitz in Düsseldorf, Richter produced the first of the monumental transparent mirrors that appear intermittently thereafter in his oeuvre; the mirrors are significantly larger than Richter's paintings and feature adjustable steel mounts. For pieces such as ''Mirror Painting (Grey, 735-2)'' (1991), the mirrors were coloured grey by the pigment attached to the back of the glass. Arranged in two rooms, Richter presented an ensemble of paintings and colored mirrors in a special pavilion designed in collaboration with architect Paul Robbrecht at Documenta 9 in Kassel in 1992. In 2002, for the
Dia Art Foundation Dia Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumb ...
, Richter created a glass sculpture in which seven parallel panes of glass refract light and the world beyond, offering altered visions of the exhibition space; ''Spiegel I'' (Mirror I) and ''Spiegel II'' (Mirror II), a two-part mirror piece from 1989 that measures 7' tall and 18' feet long, which alters the boundaries of the environment and again changes one's visual experience of the gallery; and ''Kugel'' (Sphere), 1992, a stainless steel sphere that acts as a mirror, reflecting the space. Since 2002, the artist has created a series of three dimensional glass constructions, such as ''6 Standing Glass Panels'' (2002/2011).


Drawings

In 2010, the Drawing Center showed ''Lines which do not exist'', a survey of Richter's drawings from 1966 to 2005, including works made using mechanical intervention such as attaching a pencil to an electric hand drill. It was the first career overview of Richter in the United States since ''40 Years of Painting'' at the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in 2002. In a review of ''Lines which do not exist'', R. H. Lossin wrote in ''
The Brooklyn Rail ''The Brooklyn Rail'' is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The ''Rail'' is based out of Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, criti ...
'': "Viewed as a personal (and possibly professional) deficiency, Richter's drawing practice consisted of diligently documenting something that didn't work—namely a hand that couldn't draw properly. ...Richter displaces the concept of the artist's hand with hard evidence of his own, wobbly, failed, and very material appendage."


Commissions

Throughout his career, Richter has mostly declined lucrative licensing deals and private commissions. Measuring 9 by 9 ½ feet and depicting both the Milan Duomo and the square's 19th-century
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II () is Italy's oldest active shopping gallery and a major landmark of Milan in Italy. Housed within a four-story double arcade in the centre of town, the ''Galleria'' is named after Victor Emmanuel II, the first ki ...
, ''
Domplatz, Mailand ''Cathedral Square, Milan'' is a 1968 painting by Gerhard Richter. The photorealistic painting is one of Richter's largest figurative paintings at 2,75 m x 2,90 m. It depicts Milan's Cathedral Square between the Galleria Vitto ...
'' (1968) was a commission from Siemens, and it hung in that company's offices in Milan from 1968 to 1998. (In 1998, Sotheby's sold it in London, where it fetched what was then a record price for Richter, $3.6 million). In 1980, Richter and
Isa Genzken Isa Genzken (born 27 November 1948) is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin. Her primary media are sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including concrete, plaster, wood and textile. She also works with photograp ...
were commissioned to design the König-Heinrich-Platz underground station in
Duisburg Duisburg () is a city in the Ruhr metropolitan area of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Lying on the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr rivers in the center of the Rhine-Ruhr Region, Duisburg is the 5th largest city in No ...
; it was only completed in 1992. In 1986, Richter received a commission for two large-scale paintings – ''Victoria I'' and ''Victoria II'' – from the Victoria insurance company in Düsseldorf. In 1990, along with
Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...
and
Oswald Mathias Ungers Oswald Mathias Ungers (12 July 1926 – 30 September 2007) was a German architect and architectural theorist, known for his rationalist designs and the use of cubic forms. Among his notable projects are museums in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Colog ...
, he created works for the
Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank UniCredit Bank AG, better known under its brand name HypoVereinsbank (HVB), is the fifth-largest of the German financial institutions, ranked according to its total assets, and the fourth-largest bank in Germany according to the number of its e ...
in Düsseldorf. In 1998, he installed a wall piece based on the colours of Germany's flag in the rebuilt Reichstag in Berlin. In 2012 he was asked to design the first page of the German newspaper ''
Die Welt ''Die Welt'' ("The World") is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE. ''Die Welt'' is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group. Its leading competitors are the ''Frankfurter All ...
''. In 2017 Richter designed the label of the 2015 Chateau Mouton Rothschild's first wine of that year.


Church windows

In 2002, the same year as his MoMA retrospective, Richter was asked to design a stained glass window in the
Cologne Cathedral Cologne Cathedral (german: Kölner Dom, officially ', English: Cathedral Church of Saint Peter) is a Catholic cathedral in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archdiocese o ...
. In August 2007, his window was unveiled. It is an abstract collage of 11,500
pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...
-like squares in 72 colors, randomly arranged by computer (with some symmetry), reminiscent of his 1974 painting "4096 colours". The artist waived any fee, and the costs of materials and mounting the window came to around €370,000 ($506,000), covered by donations from more than 1,000 people. Cardinal
Joachim Meisner Joachim Meisner (25 December 1933 – 5 July 2017) was a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was the immediate past Archbishop of Cologne, serving from 1989 until his resignation was accepted by Pope Francis in 2014. He previously serve ...
did not attend the window's unveiling as he would have preferred it to have been a figurative representation of 20th century Christian
martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...
s and said that Richter's window would fit better in a mosque or other prayer house. A professed atheist with "a strong leaning towards Catholicism", Richter had his three children with his third wife baptized in the Cologne Cathedral. In September 2020, Richter unveiled his three 30-foot-tall stained-glass windows for the
Tholey Abbey Tholey Abbey (german: Abtei Tholey) in Tholey, in the district of Sankt Wendel in Saarland, is a Benedictine monastery dedicated to Saint Maurice. It is part of the Beuronese Congregation within the Benedictine Confederation. History As early a ...
, one of the oldest monasteries in Germany. He called them his last major work, adding that he would focus on drawings and sketches from then on. The large choir windows were made by Gustva van Treeck, an esteemed glass workshop in nearby
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
. They are abstract painted works inspired by his "Pattern" series from the 1990s. An additional 34 figurative stained glass windows designed for the abbey by Afghan-German Muslim artist
Mahbuba Maqsoodi Mahbuba Elham Maqsoodi (born 1957) is a German- Afghan artist based in Munich, Germany. She is recognized for miniature paintings and painting on glass, including designing 34 stained glass windows for Tholey Abbey in Germany. She is an advocate f ...
are expected to be completed by Easter 2021. The monks of the abbey hoped the windows would promote tourism to the abbey and its town and bring people into the faith.


Exhibitions

Richter first began exhibiting in Düsseldorf in 1963. Richter had his first gallery solo show in 1964 at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. Soon after, he had exhibitions in
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
and
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
and by the early 1970s exhibited frequently throughout Europe and the United States. In 1966,
Bruno Bischofberger Bruno Bischofberger (born 1940) is a Swiss art dealer and collector. Life Bischofberger was born in 1940 in Zürich. He studied art history, archaeology and ethnography (folk art) at the University of Zurich, with further studies at the unive ...
was the first to show Richter's works outside Germany. Richter's first retrospective took place at the
Kunsthalle Bremen The Kunsthalle Bremen is an art museum in Bremen, Germany. It is located close to the Bremen Old Town on the "Culture Mile" (german: Kulturmeile). The Kunsthalle was built in 1849, enlarged in 1902 by architect Eduard Gildemeister, and expanded ...
in 1976 and covered works from 1962 to 1974. A traveling retrospective at Düsseldorf's Kunsthalle in 1986 was followed in 1991 by a retrospective at the
Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, London. In 1993, he received a major touring retrospective "Gerhard Richter: Malerei 1962–1993" curated by
Kasper König Kasper König (born 1943) is a German museum director and curator. Career König was born in Mettingen. In 1965 he traveled to New York as a courier on behalf of the Robert Fraser Gallery, where he lived intermittently until 1978. From 1973 t ...
, with a three volume catalogue edited by
Benjamin Buchloh Benjamin Heinz-Dieter Buchloh (born November 15, 1941) is a German art historian. Between 2005 and 2021 he was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art in the History of Art and Architecture department at Harvard University. Education and c ...
. This exhibition containing 130 works carried out over the course of thirty years, was to entirely reinvent Richter's career. Richter became known to a U.S. audience in 1990, when the
Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, ...
circulated ''Baader-Meinhof (18 October 1977)'', a show that that was later seen at the
Lannan Foundation The Lannan Literary Awards are a series of awards and literary fellowships given out in various fields by the Lannan Foundation. Established in 1989, the awards are meant "to honor both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional ...
in Marina del Rey, California. Richter's first North American retrospective was in 1998 at the
Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Bev ...
and at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporar ...
. In 2002, a 40-year retrospective of Richter's work was held at the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, New York, and traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago, the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...
, and the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...
, Washington, D.C. He has participated in several international art shows, including the
Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
(1972, 1980, 1984, 1997 and 2007), as well as Documenta V (1972), VII (1982), VIII (1987), IX (1992), and X (1997). In 2006, an exhibition at the Getty Center connected the landscapes of Richter to the Romantic pictures of Caspar David Friedrich, showing that both artists "used abstraction, expansiveness, and emptiness to express transcendent emotion through painting." The Gerhard Richter Archive was established in cooperation with the artist in 2005 as an institute of the
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (, ''Dresden State Art Collections'') is a cultural institution in Dresden, Germany, owned by the State of Saxony. It is one of the most renowned and oldest museum institutions in the world, originating from the ...
. The first major exhibition of his work in Australia, ''Gerhard Richter: The Life of Images'', was mounted by the
Queensland Gallery of Modern Art The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) is an art museum located within the Queensland Cultural Centre in the South Bank precinct of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The gallery is part of QAGOMA. GOMA, which opened on 2 December 2006, is the largest ...
in Brisbane from 14 October 2017 to 4 February 2018."Review: Gerhard Richter at GOMA paints a portrait of an obsessive-compulsive"
by John McDonald, ''
The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'', 10 November 2017
It included more than 90 works, including the newly created ''Atlas Overview'', a 400-panel extract selected by Richter from the larger ''Atlas'' project now deemed too fragile for loan or travel.


Solo exhibitions (selection)

* ''Gerhard Richter 4900 Colours: Version II'' at the Serpentine Gallery, London, United Kingdom. 2008 * ''Gerhard Richter Portraits'' at the National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom. 2009 * ''Gerhard Richter: Panorama'' at the
Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...
, London, United Kingdom. 2011 * ''Gerhard Richter'' at the
Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, Paris, France. 2012 * ''Gerhard Richter: Panorama'' at the
Neue Nationalgalerie The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its s ...
, Berlin, Germany. 2012 *''Gerhard Richter – Editions 1965–2011'' at
me Collectors Room Berlin . me Collectors Room Berlin / Stiftung Olbricht (Olbricht Foundation) was an exhibition space in Berlin, Germany, situated on Auguststrasse 68. Founded by art collector, endocrinologist and heir to Germany's Wella hair-care estate Thomas Olbricht, ...
, Berlin, Germany


Gallery

File:Helnwein and Richter in Prague.jpg, Gerhard Richter, ''Undeniable Me'', 1971/72, 48 painted portraits at the right; at the left portraits of
Gottfried Helnwein Gottfried Helnwein (born 8 October 1948) is an Austrian-Irish visual artist. He has worked as a painter, draftsman, photographer, muralist, sculptor, installation and performance artist, using a wide variety of techniques and media. His work is ...
, 1991–92 File:Gerhard-Richter-DU-U-Bahn.jpg, Gerhard Richter &
Isa Genzken Isa Genzken (born 27 November 1948) is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin. Her primary media are sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including concrete, plaster, wood and textile. She also works with photograp ...
, ''Wall-art in underground, Duisburg'', 1980–92, in colorful enamel plates File:Kölner Dom Richter Fenster.jpg, Gerhard Richter, ''Symphony of Light'', c. 2007, light-fall from the stained glass window in the Kölner Dom


Recognition

Although Richter gained popularity and critical praise throughout his career, his fame burgeoned during his 2005 retrospective exhibition, which declared his place among the most important artists of the 20th century. Today, many call Gerhard Richter the best living painter. In part, this comes from his ability to explore the medium at a time when many were heralding its death. Richter has been the recipient of numerous prominent awards, including the State Prize of the state North Rhine-Westphalia in 2000; the Wexner Prize, 1998; the
Praemium Imperiale Prince Takamatsu The Praemium Imperiale ( ja, 高松宮殿下記念世界文化賞, Takamatsu-no-miya Denka Kinen Sekai Bunka-shō, World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu) is an international art prize inaugur ...
, Japan, 1997; the Golden Lion of the 47th Biennale, Venice, 1997; the
Wolf Prize The Wolf Prize is an international award granted in Israel, that has been presented most years since 1978 to living scientists and artists for ''"achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people ... irrespective of nati ...
in Israel in 1994/5; the
Goslarer Kaiserring Since 1975, the Goslarer Kaiserring award has been given, by the city of Goslar, to a distinguished international artist of modern and contemporary art. The award is for artists whose work has given the contemporary art significant impetus. The pri ...
Prize der Stadt Goslar, Mönchehaus-Museum für Moderne Kunst, Goslar, Germany, 1988; the
Oskar Kokoschka Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expres ...
Prize, Vienna, 1985; the
Arnold Bode Arnold Bode (23 December 1900 – 3 October 1977) was a German architect, painter, designer and curator. Arnold was born in Kassel, Germany. From 1928 to 1933, he worked as a painter and university lecturer in Berlin. However, when the Nazis ca ...
Prize, Kassel, 1981; and the Junger Western Art Prize, Germany, 1961. He was made an honorary citizen of Cologne in April 2007. He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
in 2012.


Influence

Among the students who studied with Richter at the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová ...
between 1971 and 1994 were
Ludger Gerdes Ludger Gerdes (10 April 1954, Lastrup, (Germany) – 17 October 2008 near Dülmen) was a German painter, sculptor and multimedia artist. Life After his school-leaving examination (Abitur) at the secondary school Antonianum in Vechta, Ludge ...
, Hans-Jörg Holubitschka,
Bernard Lokai Bernard Lokai (born 5 September 1960) is a German painter. He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and was a student of Gerhard Richter, and part of the Young Figuratives movement. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Berlin, Germany. In ...
,
Thomas Schütte Thomas Schütte (born 16 November 1954) is a German contemporary artist. He sculpts, creates architectural designs, and draws. He lives and works in Düsseldorf. Education From 1973 to 1981 Schütte studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf al ...
,
Thomas Struth Thomas Struth (born 11 October 1954) is a German photographer who is best known for his ''Museum Photographs'' series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives ...
, Katrin Kneffel, Michael van Ofen, and Richter's second wife,
Isa Genzken Isa Genzken (born 27 November 1948) is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin. Her primary media are sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including concrete, plaster, wood and textile. She also works with photograp ...
. He is known to have influenced
Ellsworth Kelly Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 – December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, c ...
, Christopher Wool and Johan Andersson. He has also served as source of inspiration for writers and musicians. Sonic Youth used a painting of his for the cover art for their album ''
Daydream Nation ''Daydream Nation'' is the fifth full-length studio album and first double album by American alternative rock band Sonic Youth, released on October 18, 1988. The band recorded the album between July and August 1988 at Greene St. Recording in Ne ...
'' in 1988. He was a fan of the band and did not charge for the use of his image. The original, over square, is now showcased in Sonic Youth's studio in NYC.
Don DeLillo Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, perf ...
's short story "Baader-Meinhof" describes an encounter between two strangers at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The meeting takes place in the room displaying ''18 October 1977'' (1988). Photographer
Cotton Coulson Cotton Coulson (1952 – May 27, 2015 in Tromsø, Norway) was a photographer known for his work for '' National Geographic'' magazine. Professional life Coulson graduated from New York University Film School in 1975, and was hired by '' National ...
described Richter as "one of isfavourite artists".National Geographic Traveller: Cotton Coulson
at the World Photographic Organisation; published 10 December 2014; retrieved 21 June 2015
For the last 18 years, Gerhard Richter has been the number one on a Kunstkompass scale of most important world artists, made by a German magazine Capital.


Position in the art market

Following an exhibition with Blinky Palermo at Galerie Heiner Friedrich in 1971, Richter's formal arrangement with the dealer came to an end in 1972. Thereafter Friedrich was only entitled to sell the paintings that he had already obtained contractually from Richter. In the following years, Richter showed with
Galerie Konrad Fischer The Galerie Konrad Fischer is a German contemporary art gallery. It was founded in 1967 by Dorothee and Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf, in a disused alley in the center of the city. Its first exhibition presented the work of Carl Andre to European a ...
, Düsseldorf, and Sperone Westwater, New York. Today Richter is represented by Marian Goodman, his primary dealer since 1985. Today, museums own roughly 38% of Richter's works, including half of his large abstract paintings. By 2004, Richter's annual turnover was $120 million. At the same time, his works often appear at auction. According to artnet, an online firm that tracks the art market, $76.9 million worth of Richter's work was sold at auction in 2010. Richter's high turnover volume reflects his prolificacy as well as his popularity. As of 2012, no fewer than 545 distinct Richter's works had sold at auctions for more than $100,000. 15 of them had sold for more than $10,000,000 between 2007 and 2012. Richter's paintings have been flowing steadily out of Germany since the mid-1990s even as certain important German collectors – Frieder Burda, Josef Fröhlich, Georg Böckmann, and Ulrich Ströher – have held on to theirs. Richter's candle paintings were the first to command high auction prices. Three months after his MoMA exhibition opened in 2001,
Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
sold his ''Three Candles'' (1982) for $5.3 million. In February 2008, the artist's eldest daughter, Betty, sold her ''Kerze'' (1983) for £7,972,500 ($15 million), triple the high estimate, at Sotheby's in London. His 1982 ''Kerze (Candle)'' sold for £10.5 million ($16.5 million) at Christie's London in October 2011. In February 2008, Christie's London set a first record for Richter's "
capitalist realism The term "capitalist realism" has been used, particularly in Germany, to describe commodity-based art, from Pop Art in the 1950s and 1960s to the commodity art of the 1980s and 1990s. When used in this way, it is a play on the term "socialist r ...
" pictures from the 1960s by selling the painting ''Zwei Liebespaare'' (1966) for £7,300,500 ($14.3 million) to
Stephan Schmidheiny Stephan Ernst Schmidheiny (born 29 October 1947) is a Swiss entrepreneur, philanthropist and advocate of sustainable development. In 2019, his net worth was estimated by Forbes to be $2.3 billion. He's also well known for being convicted over his ...
. In 2010, the
Weserburg The Weserburg is a modern art museum in Bremen, Germany. Opened in 1991, it is located on the Teerhof peninsula next to the River Weser in an old factory building which was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War. Originally known ...
modern art museum in Bremen, Germany, decided to sell Richter's 1966 painting ''Matrosen'' (Sailors) in a November auction held by Sotheby's, where
John D. Arnold John Douglas Arnold (born 1974) is an American philanthropist, former Enron executive and founder of Arnold Ventures LLC, formerly the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. In 2007, Arnold became the youngest billionaire in the U.S. His firm, Centa ...
bought it for $13 million.Gerhard Richter, b.1932: Matrosen (Sailors)
. Sotheby's. Accessed August 2013.
''Vierwaldstätter See'', the largest of a distinct series of four views of
Lake Lucerne __NOTOC__ Lake Lucerne (german: Vierwaldstättersee, literally "Lake of the four forested settlements" (in English usually translated as ''forest cantons''), french: lac des Quatre-Cantons, it, lago dei Quattro Cantoni) is a lake in central S ...
painted by Richter in 1969, sold for £15.8 million ($24 million) at Christie's London in 2015. Another coveted group of works is the ''Abstrakte Bilder'' series, particularly those made after 1988, which are finished with a large squeegee rather than a brush or roller. At
Pierre Bergé Pierre Vital Georges Bergé (; 14 November 1930 – 8 September 2017) was a French industrialist and patron. He co-founded the fashion label Yves Saint Laurent, and was a longtime business partner (and onetime life partner) of its namesake des ...
& Associés in July 2009, Richter's 1979 oil painting ''Abstraktes Bild'' exceeded its estimate, selling for €95,000 ($136,000).Abstraktes Bild – Abstract Painting 1979: Catalogue Raisonné 447
Gerhard Richter. Accessed August 2013.
Richter's ''Abstraktes Bild'', of 1990 was made the top price of 7.2 million pounds, or about $11.6 million, at a Sotheby's sale in February 2011 to a bidder who was said by dealers to be an agent for the New York dealer
Larry Gagosian Lawrence Gilbert "Larry" Gagosian (born April 19, 1945) is an American art dealer who owns the Gagosian Gallery chain of art galleries. Working in concert with collectors including Douglas S. Cramer, Eli Broad, and Keith Barish, he developed a ...
. In November 2011, Sotheby's sold a group of colorful abstract canvases by Richter, including ''Abstraktes Bild 849-3'', which made a record price for the artist at auction when
Lily Safra Lily Safra (née Watkins; also Cohen, Monteverde and Bendahan; 30 December 1934 – 9 July 2022) was a Brazilian-Monegasque billionaire and socialite who amassed considerable wealth through her four marriages. She had a significant art collectio ...
Carol Vogel (12 January 2012)
Surprise! Israel Museum Is Receiving a Richter
, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''
paid $20.8 million only to donate it to the Israel Museum afterwards. Months later, a record $21.8 million was paid at Christie's for the 1993 painting ''Abstraktes Bild 798-3''. ''Abstraktes Bild (809–4)'', one of the artist's abstract canvases from 1994, was sold by Eric Clapton at Sotheby's to a telephone bidder for $34.2 million in late 2012. (It had been estimated to bring $14.1 million to $18.8 million.) This was exceeded in May 2013 when his 1968 piece ''
Domplatz, Mailand ''Cathedral Square, Milan'' is a 1968 painting by Gerhard Richter. The photorealistic painting is one of Richter's largest figurative paintings at 2,75 m x 2,90 m. It depicts Milan's Cathedral Square between the Galleria Vitto ...
'' (Cathedral square, Milan) was sold for $37.1 million (£24.4 million) in New York. This was further exceeded in February 2015 when his 1986 painting ''Abstraktes Bild (599)'' sold for $44.52 million (£30.4 million) in London at Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale. This was the highest price at auction of a piece of contemporary art at the time; Richter's record was broken on 12 November 2013 when Jeff Koons' ''Balloon Dog (Orange)'', sold at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York City for US$58.4 million. When asked about art prices like these, Richter said "It's just as absurd as the
banking crisis A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may cease to function in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking system (where banks no ...
. It's impossible to understand and it's
daft The Dutch-American Friendship Treaty (also known as DAFT or Dutch American Residency Treaty) is an agreement between the United States and the Netherlands signed into law at The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipa ...
!""Gerhard Richter talks about Panorama at Tate Modern"
Phaidon.com, October 2011


Film

In 2007, made a short film called ''Gerhard Richter's Window'' where the media-shy artist appeared on camera for the first time in 15 years. In 2011, Belz's feature-length documentary entitled ''Gerhard Richter Painting'' was released. The film focused almost entirely on the world's highest paid living artist producing his large-scale abstract squeegee works in his studio. The 2018 drama film ''
Never Look Away ''Never Look Away'' (german: Werk ohne Autor, lit=Work Without Author) is a 2018 German epic coming-of-age romantic drama film written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It was nominated for a Golden Lion at the 75th Venice Inte ...
'' is inspired by Richter's life story. In 2016 and 2019 Richter worked again with Corinna Belz on two films based on his 2012 book ''Patterns''. The previous piece named ''Richters Patterns'' when shown is partnered with music by the German composer
Marcus Schmickler Marcus Schmickler (born November 15, 1968, in Cologne) is a German composer, musician, and producer. He is also known under the pseudonym Pluramon. Background In 1968 he was born as the son of an industrial salesman and a baker's daughter in C ...
, the later by the American composer Steve Reich, both performed by a live ensemble. The later work in turn is part of a larger two-section collaboration, ''
Reich Richter Pärt ''Reich Richter Pärt'' was a duo of 2019 live immersive interdisciplinary performance pieces which combined paintings, new musical compositions, and film. The work in its original form was site specific as commissioned for and staged under the g ...
'' which was commissioned for the inaugural season at The Shed in the Hudson Yards development in
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
in New York City."New Steve Reich Gerhard Richter Film Project Premieres at The Shed"
Broadway World, 12 March 2019


See also

* '' Wand (Wall)''


References


Sources

* * *


Further reading

*
Götz Adriani Götz Adriani (born 21 November 1940 in Stuttgart) is a German art historian. Born as the son of an art historian (Gert Adriani), he studied history of art, archaeology and history at the universities of Munich, Vienna and Tübingen, earning a ...
: "Gerhard Richter: Paintings From Private Collections", Hatje Cantz, 2008. *Ulrich Bischoff/Elisabeth Hipp/Jeanne Anne Nugent: "From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter": German Paintings from Dresden. Getty Trust Publications, Jean Paul Getty Museum, Cologne 2006. *Hubertus Butin/Stefan Gronert: "Gerhard Richter. Editions 1965–2004". Catalogue raisonné, Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2003/2004. *Bruno Eble, ''Gerhard Richter : la surface du regard'', L'Harmattan, 2006 *Dietmar Elger: "Gerhard Richter, Landscapes", Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2002. *Eckhart Gillen: "Gerhard Richter: Mr. Heyde or the murders are among us". The battle with the trauma of the displaced history of Western Germany. In: Eckhart Gillen: Problems in searching for the truth (...), Berlin 2002, p. 186–191. *Jürgen Harten (ed.): "Gerhard Richter. Paintings 1962–1985". With a catalogue raisonné from Dietmar Elger 1962–1985, Cologne 1986. *Ernst Hohenthal: "A family secret in the public domain". New revelations about Gerhard Richter's Herr Heyde, in: ''Christies's Magazine'', November 2006, New York and London 2006, Vol. XXIII. No. 5, pp. 62ff. *Andrew McNamara: "Optative Death: Gerhard Richter in the Wake of the Vanguard" in Elizabeth Klaver (ed.), ''Images of the Corpse: From the Renaissance to Cyberspace'' (The University of Wisconsin Press) 2004. *Jeanne Anne Nugent: "Family Album and Shadow Archive": Gerhard Richter's East, West, and all German Painting, 1949–1966. Dissertation in the History of Art presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 2005. *Gerhard Richter: "The Condition of History" in: Charles Harrison & Paul Wood (eds.), "Art in Theory 1900–1990". An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Malden/Mass. (Blackwell Publishers Ltd.), 1999. * Obrist, Hans Ulrich: "Gerhard Richter: 100 Pictures", Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2002. *Obrist, Hans Ulrich: "Gerhard Richter. 100 paintings", Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2005. *Obrist, Hans Ulrich: "Gerhard Richter: 4900 Colours", Hatje Cantz, 2009. *Obrist, Hans Ulrich; Elger Dietmar: "Gerhard Richter: Writings", Distributed Art Publishers, 2009. *Jürgen Schilling: "Gerhard Richter. A private collection", Duesseldorf 2004. * *Robert Storr: "Gerhard Richter, Painting", Ostfildern-Ruit (
Hatje Cantz Hatje Cantz Verlag (English: Hatje Cantz Publishing) is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd HatjeFranz J. Giessibl: "First View Inside an Atom. Encounters with Gerhard Richter between Art and Science
Walther and Franz König Verlag, Cologne, 2022.


External links

* *
Official website
with comprehensive image database, biography, literature list and timeline *

at
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

Gerhard Richter Archive
(State Art Collections Dresden, Germany)

at Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf, Germany
Thomas Dreher: Gerhard Richter: Atlas (1989)
Review of an exhibition at the
Lenbachhaus The Lenbachhaus () is a building housing an art museum in Munich's '' Kunstareal''. The building The Lenbachhaus was built as a Florentine-style villa for the painter Franz von Lenbach between 1887 and 1891 by Gabriel von Seidl and was expa ...
Munich 1989, in German * Discussion of Cage paintings by
Janina Ramirez Janina Sara Maria Ramirez (; ' Maleczek; born 7 July 1980), sometimes credited as Nina Ramirez, is a British art historian, cultural historian, and TV presenter. She specialises in interpreting symbols and examining works of art within their hi ...
and Phil Selway
Art Detective podcast, 8 March 2017
{{DEFAULTSORT:Richter, Gerhard Abstract painters Contemporary painters Postmodern artists German male painters Artists from Dresden Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni German atheists 1932 births Living people German contemporary artists 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists 21st-century German painters 21st-century German male artists 20th-century German printmakers 20th-century German photographers 21st-century German photographers Photographers from Dresden Hitler Youth members Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts