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Paintings. Richter officially began painting in 1962. Here we give you access to his various works, comprising photo paintings and abstracts.
- Everyday Life
Watch short videos for detailed views of Gerhard Richter's...
- Baader-Meinhof
The cycle October 18, 1977 consists of 15 paintings that...
- Landscapes
Landscapes » Photo Paintings » Gerhard Richter ... Gerhard...
- Bilder
Richter begann seine offizielle Tätigkeit im Jahr 1962. Auf...
- Children
Watch short videos for detailed views of Gerhard Richter's...
- Townscapes
The source images were mainly aerial photographs of cities,...
- Everyday Life
- German
- February 9, 1932
- Dresden, Germany
- Mouth (Brigitte Bardot's Lips) Gerhard Richter 1963.
- Colour Streaks Gerhard Richter 1968.
- 1024 Colours Gerhard Richter 1973.
- Clouds Gerhard Richter 1982.
- Summary of Gerhard Richter
- Accomplishments
- Biography of Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter is a German painter who originally trained in a realist style and later developed an appreciation for the more progressive work of his American and European contemporaries. Richter increasingly employed his own painting as a means for exploring how images that appear to capture "truth" often prove, on extended viewing, far less obje...
Richter has maintained a lifelong fascination for the power of images and painting's long, uneasy relationship with photography: while either medium may claim to reflect or express reality truthful...Richter borrows much of his painted imagery from newspapers, or even his own family albums. Often he begins by mechanically projecting such an image onto the canvas, a technique for thinking about...Richter would often blur his subjects and embrace chance effects in his own painting process in order to show the impossibility of any artist conveying the full truth of a subject in its original c...In Richter's completely abstract canvases, personal emotion and all traces of the painter's autobiography seem missing. The painting's many layers, strokes, and scrapes of color may thus appear as...Childhood
Gerhard Richter was born in 1932 in Dresden, Germany, during the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi Third Reich. Notably, some of Richter's relatives were directly involved in the Nazi movement, namely his father, a schoolteacher, and an uncle. Richter's mother, the daughter of a concert pianist, encouraged her son's early talent for draftsmanship. In 1948, at the age of 16, Richter quit his formal education and took up an apprenticeship as a set painter for the...
Early Training
Beginning in 1951, Richter studied at the Kunstakademie, Dresden, where he painted murals and political banners commissioned by state-owned businesses. During this time, the East German communist regime imposed a Social Realist style on all practicing artists; this policy effectively turned art to the service of political propaganda. In keeping with this development, the government banned exhibitions of American Pop art and Fluxus. These circumstances severely limited Richter's fledgling arti...
Mature Period
While continuing to paint in a realist manner, around 1961, Richter began using photographs, projecting and tracing images directly onto the canvas. Richter believed that he was, as an artist, "not painting a particular person, but a picture that has nothing in common with the model." Thus while he painted individuals from photographs, Richter's replica images were often blurred and bore nothing distinctively identifiable about the subject, an effect that forced the viewer to consider the fun...
- German
- February 9, 1932
- Dresden, Germany
- 1024 Colours, 1973. Initially created in 1973, 1024 Colours illustrates Richter’s playful relationship with color. Inspired by color charts that he found in marketing and commercials, Richter created his own unique color grading system.
- Seascape (Seestück) In 1968, Gerhard Richter embarked on a journey to capture the timeless beauty and turbulent power of the sea in his painting titled Seascape (Seestück).
- Abstract Painting 599, 1986. As its name suggests, Richter’s 1986 Abstract Painting 599 features amorphous shapes and motifs open to interpretation. While this painting is only one in Richter’s vast series of abstract paintings, the artist has recognized it as one of his favorites from the collection.
- Candle, 1983. Richter’s Candle riffs on the principles of photorealism in his depiction of a singular lit candle. It has also achieved recognition outside of painting and visual art circles as the cover of rock band Sonic Youth’s seminal 1988 album Daydream Nation.
With a career spanning nearly six decades, Gerhard Richter is widely considered one of the greatest artists of our time. To explore the artist's work and life, click on an image below...
View Gerhard Richter’s 8,371 artworks on artnet. Find an in-depth biography, exhibitions, original artworks for sale, the latest news, and sold auction prices. See available prints and multiples, paintings, and photographs for sale and learn about the artist.
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Richter’s paintings range from figurative images based on photographs to complex abstractions. These dual modes are sometimes characterized as oppositional, but Richter embraces the in-between as an active space to develop his practice.