Gerhard Richter

For the German Major in the Luftwaffe, seeGerhard Richter (pilot).

Gerhard Richter(German:[ˈɡeːɐ̯haʁtˈʁɪçtɐ];born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has producedabstractas well asphotorealisticpaintings, photographs andglass 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, with him being the most expensive living painter at one time.

Gerhard Richter
Richter in 2017
Born	(1932-02-09)9 February 1932 Dresden,Germany
Education	Dresden Art Academy,Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
Known for	Painting
Movement	abstract art,photo realism,conceptual art,capitalist realism
Website	www.gerhard-richter

Richter has been called the "greatest living painter","the world's most important artist"and the "Picasso of the 21st century".

Personal life

Childhood and education

Richter was born in Hospital Dresden-Neustadt inDresden,Saxony,and grew up in Reichenau (nowBogatynia,Poland), and in Waltersdorf (Zittauer Gebirge), in theUpper Lusatiancountryside, 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 newNational Socialisteducation 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.When he was 10 years old, Gerhard was conscripted into theDeutsches Jungvolk;theHitler Youth,for teenage boys, was dissolved at the end of the war, before Richter was old enough.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 hadschizophrenia,was starved to death in theNazi euthanasiaprogram.

Richter left school after 10th grade and apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, before studying at theDresden Academy of Fine Arts.In 1948, he finished vocational high school inZittauand, 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 wereKarl von Appen,Heinz Lohmar,andWill Grohmann.

Relationships

Richter married Marianne Eufinger in 1957; she gave birth to his first daughter. He married his second wife, the sculptorIsa Genzken,in 1982. Richter had two sons and a daughter with his third wife,Sabine Moritz,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 therefectoryof his Academy of Arts as part of his B.A. Another mural entitledLebensfreude(Joy of life) followed at theGerman Hygiene Museumfor his diploma. It was intended to produce an effect "similar to that of wallpaper or tapestry".

Gerhard Richter c. 1970, photograph byLothar Wolleh

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 likeArbeiterkampf(Workers' struggle), on oil paintings (e.g. portraits of the East German actressAngelica Domröseand of Richter's first wife Ema), on various self-portraits, and on a panorama of Dresden with the neutral nameStadtbild(Townscape, 1956).

Together with his wife Marianne, Richter escaped fromEasttoWest Germanytwo months before the building of theBerlin Wallin 1961. Both his wall paintings in the Academy of Arts and the Hygiene Museum were then painted over for ideological reasons. Much later, afterGerman reunification,two "windows" of the wall paintingJoy 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 theKunstakademie DüsseldorfunderKarl Otto Götz,together withSigmar Polke,Werner Hilsing,HA Schult,Kuno Gonschior,Franz Erhard Walther,Konrad Lueg, andGotthard Graubner.With Polke andKonrad Fischer(pseudonym Lueg), he introduced the termKapitalistischer Realismus(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 asSocialist Realism,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 theHochschule für bildende Künste Hamburgand theNova Scotia College of Art and Designas 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"

Hunting Party(1966) at theArt Institute of Chicago,in 2023

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 inHelga 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 1972Venice Biennale.ForForty-eight Portraits(1971–72), he chose mainly the faces of composers such asGustav MahlerandJean Sibelius,and of writers such asH. G. WellsandFranz Kafka.

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 ofBetty,his daughter, were made in 1977 and 1988 respectively; the three portraits titledIGwere made in 1993 and depict the artist's second wife,Isa Genzken.Lesende(1994) portraysSabine Moritz,whom Richter married in 1995, shown absorbed in the pages of a magazine.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 & Georgecommissioned 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.He has explored a variety of photographic printmaking processes –screenprint,photolithography,andcollotype– 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 ofCorsica.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 German Romantic Painting. They are compared to the work ofCaspar David Friedrich(1774–1840). Friedrich is foundational to German landscape painting. Each artist spent formative years of their lives inDresden.Große Teyde-Landschaft(1971) takes its imagery from similar holiday snapshots of the volcanic regions ofTenerife.

Atlaswas first exhibited in 1972 at the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst in Utrecht under the titleAtlas der Fotos und Skizzen.It included 315 parts. The work has continued to expand, and was exhibited later in full form at theLenbachhausin Munich in 1989, theMuseum Ludwigin Cologne in 1990, and atDia Art Foundationin New York in 1995.Atlascontinues 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 toGreenland.His friendHanne Darbovenwas 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 titledSeascape,emerged from the Greenland photographs.

In 1982 and 1983, Richter made a series of paintings ofCandlesandSkullsthat relate to a longstanding tradition of still lifememento moripainting. Each composition is most commonly based on a photograph taken by Richter in his own studio. Influenced by old master vanitas painters such asGeorges de La TourandFrancisco de Zurbarán,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.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.Richter has said that while painting this series, “I did experience feelings to do with contemplation, remembering, silence, and death.”

In a 1988 series of 15 ambiguous photo paintings entitled18 October 1977,he depicted four members of theRed Army Faction(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 ofUlrike Meinhofduring her years as a radical journalist; on photographs of the arrest ofHolger Meins;on police shots ofGudrun Ensslinin prison; onAndreas Baader'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, andJan-Carl Raspe.

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 the9/11 attacks,including on theWorld Trade Center,his plane was diverted toHalifax, Nova Scotia.A few years later, he made one small painting specifically about the planes crashing into theWorld Trade Center.InSeptember: A History Painting by Gerhard Richter,Robert Storrsituates Richter's 2005 paintingSeptemberwithin 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's18 October 1977cycle.

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 theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,of a computer-generated simulacrum of reflections from the silicon dioxide found in insects' shells.

In 2014, Richter created a cycle of four paintings using theSonderkommando photographs,which were taken in theAuschwitz-Birkenau concentration campduring theHolocaust,titledBirkenau.

Abstract work

Richter's early workTable(1962) consisted of a painting of a table, taken from a photograph in a magazine, withtachistegestural marks overlapping. Those marks can be read as cancelling the photorealist representation, using haptic swirls of grey paint,as well as a form ofgenerativity.

In 1969, Richter produced the first of a group of greymonochromesthat consist exclusively of the textures resulting from different methods of paint application.

In 1976, Richter first gave the titleAbstract Paintingto 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.

From the mid-1980s, Richter began to use a homemadesqueegeeto 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 artistsYves KleinandEllsworth Kelly.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,Alan Charlton,Yves Kleinand 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.

Firenzecontinues 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 ofSteve Reichand 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 titleCage,named after the American avant-garde composerJohn Cage.TheCagepaintings 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 GermanFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungnewspaper on 20 and 21 March. This work was published in 2004 as a book entitledWar 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 resultingNovembersheets 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 as256 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 entitled10 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 friendBlinky Palermorandomly 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 mi xing colours and chance operations for their placement.The range of the colors he employed was determined by a mathematical system for mi xing 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's4900 Coloursfrom 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 ofCologne Cathedral.4900 Coloursconsists of 196 panels in 25 colors that can be reassembled in 11 variations – from a single expansive surface to multiple small-format fields. Richter developedVersion II– 49 paintings, each of which measures 97 by 97 centimeters – especially for theSerpentine Gallery.

Sculpture

Richter began to use glass in his work in 1967, when he madeFour 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 andBlinky Palermojointly submitted designs for the sports facilities for the1972 Olympic Gamesin 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 withGeorg Baselitzin 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 asMirror 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 atDocumenta9 in Kassel in 1992.

In 2002, for theDia Art Foundation,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) andSpiegel 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; andKugel(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 as6 Standing Glass Panels(2002/2011).

Drawings

In 2010, theDrawing CentershowedLines 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 since40 Years of Paintingat theMuseum of Modern Artin 2002.In a review ofLines which do not exist,R. H. Lossin wrote inThe Brooklyn Rail:"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 theMilan Duomoand the square's 19th-centuryGalleria Vittorio Emanuele II,Domplatz, Mailand(1968) was a commission fromSiemens,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 andIsa Genzkenwere commissioned to design the König-Heinrich-Platz underground station inDuisburg;it was only completed in 1992. In 1986, Richter received a commission for two large-scale paintings –Victoria IandVictoria II– from the Victoria insurance company in Düsseldorf.In 1990, along withSol LeWittandOswald Mathias Ungers,he created works for theBayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbankin Düsseldorf. In 1998, he installed a wall piece based on the colours ofGermany's flagin the rebuiltReichstagin Berlin. In 2012 he was asked to design the first page of the German newspaperDie Welt.In 2017 Richter designed the label of the 2015Chateau Mouton Rothschild's first wine of that year.

Church windows

Main article:Cologne Cathedral Window

Gerhard Richter,Symphony of Light,c. 2007; stained glass window in theCologne Cathedral,20 metres (66 ft) tall

In 2002, the same year as hisMoMAretrospective, Richter was asked todesign a stained glass windowin theCologne Cathedral. In August 2007, his window was unveiled. It is an 113 square metres (1,220 sq ft) abstract collage of 11,500pixel-like squares in 72 colors, randomly arranged by computer (with some symmetry), reminiscent of his 1974 painting4096 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.CardinalJoachim Meisnerdid not attend the window's unveiling as he would have preferred it to have been a figurative representation of 20th century Christianmartyrsand 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 theTholey Abbey,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 nearbyMunich.They are abstract painted works inspired by his "Pattern" series from the 1990s.An additional 34 figurative stained glass windows designed for the abbey byAfghan-GermanMuslim artistMahbuba Maqsoodiare 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 inMunichandBerlinand by the early 1970s exhibited frequently throughout Europe and the United States. In 1966,Bruno Bischofbergerwas the first to show Richter's works outside Germany. Richter's first retrospective took place at theKunsthalle Bremenin 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 theTate Gallery,London. In 1993, he received a major touring retrospective "Gerhard Richter: Malerei 1962–1993" curated byKasper König,with a three volume catalogue edited byBenjamin Buchloh.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 theSaint Louis Art MuseumcirculatedBaader-Meinhof (18 October 1977),a show that that was later seen at theLannan FoundationinMarina del Rey, California.Richter's first North American retrospective was in 1998 at theArt Gallery of Ontarioand at theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.In 2002, a 40-year retrospective of Richter's work was held at theMuseum of Modern Art,New York, and traveled to theArt Institute of Chicago,theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art,and theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,Washington, D.C. His work is included in the permanent collections of several museum institutions in the US, such as thePérez Art Museum Miami.

He has participated in several international art shows, including theVenice Biennale(1972, 1980, 1984, 1997 and 2007), as well asDocumentaV (1972), VII (1982), VIII (1987), IX (1992), and X (1997).In 2006, an exhibition at theGetty Centerconnected the landscapes of Richter to the Romantic pictures ofCaspar 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 theStaatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

The first major exhibition of his work in Australia,Gerhard Richter: The Life of Images,was mounted by theQueensland Gallery of Modern Artin Brisbane from 14 October 2017 to 4 February 2018.It included more than 90 works,including the newly createdAtlas Overview,a 400-panel extract selected by Richter from the largerAtlasproject now deemed too fragile for loan or travel. In 2022 the Raphael Durazzo Gallery exhibited 2014: 20. November 2014, oil on colored photograph, 15 x 10 cm

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• Gerhard Richter 4900 Colours: Version IIat theSerpentine Gallery,London, United Kingdom. 2008
• Gerhard Richter Portraitsat theNational Portrait Gallery,London, United Kingdom. 2009
• Gerhard Richter: Panoramaat theTate Modern,London, United Kingdom. 2011
• Gerhard Richterat theCentre Pompidou,Paris, France. 2012
• Gerhard Richter: Panoramaat theNeue Nationalgalerie,Berlin, Germany. 2012
• Gerhard Richter – Editions 1965–2011atme Collectors Room Berlin,Berlin, Germany

Gallery

• 
  Gerhard Richter,Undeniable Me,1971/72, 48 painted portraits at the right; at the left portraits ofGottfried Helnwein,1991–92
• 
  Gerhard Richter &Isa Genzken,Wall-art in underground, Duisburg,1980–1992, in colorful enamel plates
• 
  Gerhard Richter,Cologne Cathedral Window,c. 2007, light-fall from the stained-glass window in theKölner 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; thePraemium Imperiale,Japan, 1997; theGolden Lionof the 47th Biennale, Venice, 1997; theWolf Prizein Israel in 1994/5; theGoslarer KaiserringPrize der Stadt Goslar, Mönchehaus-Museum für Moderne Kunst, Goslar, Germany, 1988; theOskar KokoschkaPrize, Vienna, 1985; theArnold BodePrize, 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 theAmerican Philosophical Societyin 2012.

Influence

Among the students who studied with Richter at theKunstakademie Düsseldorfbetween 1971 and 1994 wereLudger Gerdes,Hans-Jörg Holubitschka,Bernard Lokai,Thomas Schütte,Thomas Struth,Katrin Kneffel, Michael van Ofen, and Richter's second wife,Isa Genzken.He is known to have influencedEllsworth Kelly,Christopher WoolandJohan Andersson.

He has also served as source of inspiration for writers and musicians.Sonic Youthused a painting of his for the cover art for their albumDaydream Nationin 1988. He was a fan of the band and did not charge for the use of his image.The original, over 7 metres (23 ft) square, is now showcased in Sonic Youth's studio in NYC.Don DeLillo'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 displaying18 October 1977(1988).

PhotographerCotton Coulsondescribed Richter as "one of [his] favourite artists".

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 magazineCapital.

Position in the art market

Following an exhibition withBlinky Palermoat 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 withGalerie Konrad Fischer,Düsseldorf, and Sperone Westwater, New York. Richter was represented byMarian Goodman,as his primary dealer between 1985 and 2022.

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 toartnet,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'ssold hisThree Candles(1982) for $5.3 million. In February 2008, the artist's eldest daughter, Betty,sold herKerze(1983) for £7,972,500 ($15 million), triple the high estimate, at Sotheby's in London.His 1982Kerze (Candle)sold for £10.5 million ($16.5 million) atChristie'sLondon in October 2011.

In February 2008, Christie's London set a first record for Richter's "capitalist realism"pictures from the 1960s by selling the paintingZwei Liebespaare(1966) for £7,300,500 ($14.3 million)toStephan Schmidheiny.In 2010, theWeserburgmodern art museum in Bremen, Germany, decided to sell Richter's 1966 paintingMatrosen(Sailors) in a November auction held by Sotheby's, whereJohn D. Arnoldbought it for $13 million.Vierwaldstätter See,the largest of a distinct series of four views ofLake Lucernepainted by Richter in 1969, sold for £15.8 million ($24 million) atChristie'sLondon in 2015.

Another coveted group of works is theAbstrakte Bilderseries, particularly those made after 1988, which are finished with a large squeegee rather than a brush or roller.AtPierre Bergé& Associés in July 2009, Richter's 1979 oil paintingAbstraktes Bildexceeded its estimate, selling for €95,000 ($136,000).Richter'sAbstraktes 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 dealerLarry Gagosian.In November 2011, Sotheby's sold a group of colorful abstract canvases by Richter, includingAbstraktes Bild 849-3,which made a record price for the artist at auction whenLily Safrapaid $20.8 milliononly to donate it to theIsrael Museumafterwards.Months later, a record $21.8 million was paid at Christie's for the 1993 paintingAbstraktes Bild 798-3.Abstraktes Bild (809–4),one of the artist's abstract canvases from 1994, was sold byEric Claptonat 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 pieceDomplatz, Mailand(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 paintingAbstraktes Bild (599)sold for $44.52 million (£30.4 million) in London at Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale.This was thehighest price at auction of a piece of contemporary artat the time; Richter's record was broken on 12 November 2013 whenJeff Koons'Balloon Dog (Orange),sold atChristie'sPost-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 thebanking crisis.It's impossible to understand and it'sdaft!"

Film

External videos
Portraits,Paul Moorhouse, 2009, 15:46
Gerhard Richter's Betty,4:58onYouTube,Smarthistory

In 2003, Gerald Fox made adocumentaryon the life of Gerhard Richter in which he starred.In2007,Corinna Belzmade a short film calledGerhard Richter's Window.In 2011, Belz's feature-length documentary entitledGerhard Richter Paintingwas 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 filmNever Look Awayis inspired by Richter's life story.

In 2016 and 2019 Richter worked again with Corinna Belz on two films based on his 2012 bookPatterns.The previous piece namedRichters Patternswhen shown is partnered with music by the German composerMarcus Schmickler,the later by the American composerSteve Reich,both performed by a live ensemble. The later work in turn is part of a larger two-section collaboration,Reich Richter Pärtwhich was commissioned for the inaugural season atThe Shedin theHudson Yards developmentinManhattanin New York City.

See also

• Wand (Wall)

References

Sources

• Elger, Dietmar (2009).Gerhard Richter – A Life in Painting.University of Chicago Press.ISBN978-0-226-20323-2.
• Richter, Gerhard; Harten, Jürgen (1986).Gerhard Richter: Bilder 1962–1985.Köln: DuMont.
• Richter, Gerhard;Obrist, Hans Ulrich(1995).The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews, 1962–1993.Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Further reading

• Götz Adriani:"Gerhard Richter: Paintings From Private Collections", Hatje Cantz, 2008.ISBN978-3-7757-2137-0
• 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.ISBN3-7757-1430-8
• Bruno Eble,Gerhard Richter: la surface du regard,L'Harmattan, 2006ISBN978-2-296-01527-2(in French)
• Dietmar Elger: "Gerhard Richter, Landscapes", Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2002.ISBN3-7757-9101-9
• 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.(in German)
• Jürgen Harten (ed.): "Gerhard Richter. Paintings 1962–1985". With a catalogue raisonné from Dietmar Elger 1962–1985, Cologne 1986.(in German)
• 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,ISSN0266-1217Vol. 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.ISBN0-299-19790-5
• 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.ISBN978-3-7757-9100-7
• Obrist, Hans Ulrich: "Gerhard Richter. 100 paintings", Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2005.ISBN3-89322-851-9(in German)
• Obrist, Hans Ulrich: "Gerhard Richter: 4900 Colours", Hatje Cantz, 2009.ISBN978-3-7757-2344-2
• Obrist, Hans Ulrich; Elger Dietmar: "Gerhard Richter: Writings", Distributed Art Publishers, 2009.ISBN978-1-933045-94-8
• Jürgen Schilling: "Gerhard Richter. A private collection", Duesseldorf 2004.ISBN3-937572-00-7(in German)
• Schreiber, Jürgen(2005).Ein Maler aus Deutschland[A painter from Germany] (in German). Munich and Zürich: Pendo.ISBN3-86612-058-3.
• Robert Storr: "Gerhard Richter, Painting", Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2002.ISBN3-7757-1169-4(in German)
• Storr, Robert: "Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting", Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002.ISBN978-1-891024-37-5
• Angelika Thill: "Catalogue raisonné since 1962" in: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH (ed.): "Gerhard Richter", Ostfildern-Ruit 1993. Thill offers the now acceptedcatalogue raisonnébetween 1963 and 1993.(in German)
• Franz J. Giessibl:"First View Inside an Atom. Encounters with Gerhard Richter between Art and Science"Walther and Franz König Verlag, Cologne, 2022.ISBN978-3-7533-0188-4
• Hans Ulrich Obrist:"The Richter Interviews", London (HENI Publishing) 2023 (second edition).ISBN978-1-912122-59-2
• Uwe M. Schneede: "Gerhard Richter: Der unbedingte Maler", Munich (C.H. Beck) 2024.ISBN978-3-406-82149-3

External links

• Official website
• Gerhard Richter Archive| State Art Collections Dresden, Germany
• Gerhard Richterat theDavid Zwirner Gallery
• Gerhard Richterat theMuseum of Modern Art