GERHARD RICHTER German, b. b. 1932

Biography

"Art is the greatest expression of hope."

Gerhard Richter is a contemporary German painter considered among the most influential living artists. Richter’s experiments with abstraction and photo-based painting greatly contributed to the history of the medium. Culling from his vast image archive known as the Atlas, Richter’s paintings reference images of his daughter Betty, flickering candles, aerial photographs, portraits of criminals, and pastoral landscapes. “Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form,” he reflected. “And the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context.” Born on February 9, 1932 in Dresden, Germany during the rise of the Nazi regime. After World War II, living in East Germany under Soviet rule, Richter learned to produce of highly realistic Socialist Realist murals. In 1961, Richter fled to West Germany, where he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alongside Sigmar Polke. During this time, the artist first began producing blurred photo-paintings. The works explore the conflicting nature of an image’s formal make up and the content it contains. Richter introduced abstraction to his repertoire in the following decades, analyzing painterly expression through a technique of squeegeeing paint over the canvas. In 2012, Richter set a record auction price for a painting sold by a living artist, with his Abstraktes Bild (809-4) (1994) which went for $34 million. He broke this twice again, first in 2013 with Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral square, Milan) (1968) selling for $37.1 million, then in 2015 by the sale of Abstraktes Bild (1986) for $44.52 million. The artist currently lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Albertina in Vienna, among others.

Selected works
  • GERHARD RICHTER, Kugelobjekt I, 1970
    GERHARD RICHTER
    Kugelobjekt I, 1970
    Black and white photography, wooden box, 3 glass panes, 3 steel balls of different size
    18 x 13 x 5 cm
    7 1/8 x 5 1/8 x 2 in
  • GERHARD RICHTER, Abstraktes Bild, 1980
    GERHARD RICHTER
    Abstraktes Bild, 1980
    Oil on wood
    40 x 60 cm
    15 3/4 x 23 5/8 in
  • GERHARD RICHTER, Kerze I, 1988
    GERHARD RICHTER
    Kerze I, 1988
    Offset print and chalk on paper
    89,3 x 94,5 cm
    35 x 37 in
  • GERHARD RICHTER, Kerze II, 1989
    GERHARD RICHTER
    Kerze II, 1989
    Oil on offset print on paper on plastic board
    91 x 91 cm
    35 7/8 x 35 7/8 in
  • GERHARD RICHTER, Domecke I, 1998
    GERHARD RICHTER
    Domecke I, 1998
    Cibachrome photography between plexiglass plates
    78 x 55 cm
    30 3/4 x 21 5/8 in
  • GERHARD RICHTER, 3 x 3 Farben, 2007
    GERHARD RICHTER
    3 x 3 Farben, 2007
    Lacquer on wood
    29 x 29 cm
    11 3/8 x 11 3/8 in
  • GERHARD RICHTER, Studie zu Strip, 2011
    GERHARD RICHTER
    Studie zu Strip, 2011
    Digital inkjet print on paper on alu-dibond
    48 x 47 cm
    18 7/8 x 18 1/2 in
  • GERHARD RICHTER, Vorhang, 2013
    GERHARD RICHTER
    Vorhang, 2013
    Digital inkjet print (pigment print), four colors on white paper, mounted between plexiglass and alu-dibond plate
    205,5 x 195 cm
    80 3/4 x 76 3/4 in
Ausstellungen