Gerhard Richter (born February 9, 1932) is a prominent German artist. Richter is considered by some critics as one of the most important German artists of the post-World War II period and is also one of the world's most expensive, with his paintings often selling for several million dollars apiece. This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... February 9 is the 40th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... For other uses, see Dresden (disambiguation). ... For building painting, see painter and decorator. ... For other uses, see Dresden (disambiguation). ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... February 9 is the 40th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practising the arts and/or demonstrating an art. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

Biography

Richter was born in Dresden, Saxony, and grew up in Reichenau, Lower Silesia, and in Waltersdorf in the Upper Lusatian countryside. He left school after tenth grade and apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, before studying at the Dresden Art Academy. In 1948 he terminated the higher professional school in Zittau, and was trained there between 1949 and 1951 to the writing as well as stage and advertising painter. In 1950 his application for membership in the Dresden Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (Dresden University of Visual Arts, founded in 1764) was rejected. He could finally begin his study at the Dresden Academy of Arts in 1951. His teachers were Karl von Appen, Ulrich Lohmar and Will Grohmann. In these early days of his artwork he prepared a wall painting ("Communion with Picasso", 1955) for the refectory of this Academy of Arts as part of his B.A. A further mural followed within the Hygienemusem (German Hygienic Museum) with the title („Lebensfreude“, which means "Joy of life") for his diploma. Both paintings had been painted over for ideological reasons after Richter escaped from East to West-Germany (two years before the building of the Berlin wall); after unification of the both German states the wall painting "Joy of life" (1956) has been uncovered at two places in the stairway of the German Hygienic Museum, and after the millennium these two uncovered windows with a look at the "Joy of Life" has been newly recovered. From 1957 to 1961 Richter worked as a master trainee on the academy and took orders for the former state of the GDR. In this time he worked intensively at murals ("Arbeiterkampf", which means "Worker fight"), on paintings in oil (f.e. portraits of the well known East-German actress "Angelica Domroese" and of Richter's first wife "Ema"), on various selfportraits and furthermore on a panorama of Dresden with the neutral name "Stadtbild" ("Townscape", 1956). For other uses, see Dresden (disambiguation). ... The Free State of Saxony (German: Freistaat Sachsen; Sorbian: Swobodny Stat Sakska) is the easternmost federal state of Germany. ... Bogatynia (German: ) is a town in Poland, in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in Zgorzelec County. ... Lower Silesia (German: ; Polish: ; Latin: Silesia Inferior) is the northwestern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia. ... Lusatia (German Lausitz, Upper Sorbian Łužica, Lower Sorbian Łužyca, Polish Łużyce, Czech Lužice, sometimes called Sorbia, is a historical region between Bóbr-Kwisa rivers and Elbe river in northeastern Germany (states of Saxony and Brandenburg), south-western Poland (voivodship of Lower Silesia and northern Czech... Zittau (Sorbian/Lusatian Žitawa, Czech Žitava) is a city in the south east of Saxony, Germany and capital of the Löbau-Zittau district close to the border triangle between Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. ...

Richter taught as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and became tenured professor in 1971 at Düsseldorf Art Academy. In 1983, Richter resettled from Düsseldorf to Cologne, where he lives till this time. Hamburg from above Hamburgs motto: May the posterity endeavour with dignity to conserve the freedom, which the forefathers acquired. ... The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD) is a post-secondary art school located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. ... 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday. ... 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and (together with Cologne and the Ruhr Area) the economic center of Western Germany. ... For other uses, see Cologne (disambiguation). ...

Richter married Marianne Eufinger in 1957. Nine years later, she gave birth to his first daughter, Betty. He married his second wife, the sculptor Isa Genzken, in 1982. Richter had his son, Moritz, with his third wife, Sabine Moritz, the year they were married, 1995. One year later, his second daughter, Ella Maria, was born. 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Richter had his first solo show, Gerhard Richter, in 1964 at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. Soon after, he had exhibitions in Munich and Berlin and by the early 1970s exhibited frequently throughout Europe and the United States. His fourth retrospective, Gerhard Richter: 40 Years of Painting, curated by Robert Storr, opened at New York's Museum of Modern Art in February 2002, then traveled to Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... Munich (German: , pronounced  ; Austro-Bavarian: Minga [1]) is the capital of the German Federal State of Bavaria. ... Berlin is the capital city and one of the sixteen states of the Federal Republic of Germany. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, In the Western world, the focus shifted from the social activism of the sixties to social activities for ones own pleasure, save for environmentalism, which continued in a very visible way. ... View across garden, in new MoMA building by Yoshio Taniguchi. ... 2002 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December February 27, 2002 Alicia Keys wins five Grammys. ... Nickname: Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location in Chicagoland and Illinois Coordinates: Country United States State Illinois County Cook & DuPage Incorporated March 4, 1837 Government  - Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Area  - City  234. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Aerial photo (looking NW) of the Washington Monument and the White House in Washington, DC. Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia (also known as D.C.; Washington; the Nations Capital; the District; and, historically, the Federal City) is the capital city and administrative district of the United...

The Gerhard Richter Archive was established in cooperation with the artist in 2005 as an institute of the State Art Collections in Dresden, Germany (www.gerhard-richter-archiv.de).

Richter has published a number of catalogues, monographs, and books of his artwork and notes on painting, and has been awarded many honors and prizes for his art. He continues to make and exhibit paintings.

Although Richter gained popularity and critical praise throughout his career, his fame burgeoned during his most recent 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 explode the medium at a time when many were heralding its death.

Richter has a tendency to despise the work of his colleagues which betrays his ambiguous relationship to German history as well as an astonishing inability to see into the consequences of his public remarks.^{[citation needed]} In 2005, he urged the citizens of Salzburg to "do something about" a sculpture by his colleague Markus Lüpertz in an interview by by Spiegel, after describing this work as a sign of the deprivation of public art sponsorship in Germany; the sculpture, an homage to Mozart, was promptly attacked by a right-wing art activist from Austria and badly damaged. Richter's extraordinary power to cow art critics into obedience may be illustrated by the fact that no discussion about his public incitement to attack the sculpture took place, nor was the attack widely discussed.   is the fourth-largest city in Austria and the capital of the federal state of Salzburg. ... Markus Lüpertz (1941 in Leberec) is a contemporary German painter. ... Spiegel (German and Dutch for mirror) can refer to: Bugsy Spiegel, gangster, Father of Las Vegas Spiegel, Inc. ... Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (IPA: , baptized Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart) (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. ...

Art

View of the City of Dresden, 1956.

Richter's work is full of tension between depicted reality and the actuality of painting: process and material. Back to the 1950s in his time in Eastern Germany's Dresden he is known for his photo-paintings, particularly his landscapes, and his involved abstract paintings. Despite the scope of his body of work, which is commonly misunderstood as polar, Richter's paintings consistently support a unified theme that is twofold: 1. Images (and ideas and ideals) are static, superficial, and unachievable and are to be doubted; and, 2. Reality is a process of imagination and material creation and revision. Richter’s subject is the range of relationships between illusion and this reality, his painting. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2710x2066, 3256 KB) Beschreibung Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Dresden Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2710x2066, 3256 KB) Beschreibung Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Dresden Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used... Black square by Kazimir Malevich Abstract art is now generally understood to mean art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses colour and form in a non-representational way. ...

The art that T. Blash painted is not 'art' as such. It is the result of art from the artist's mind. The multiple images that goes through the artist's mind are infinite, but he had to arrive to a conclusion in which sometimes is very difficult to do. He collected hundreds of photos from magazines, books, etc in order to arrive to a conclusion on what to paint. Thus the Atlas was born; a collection of photos, magazine or newspaper cuttings compiled in one single volume.

View of Wiesental.

Wiesental - Grassy Valley 1985 Oil on Canvas 90 x 95 cm This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Wiesental - Grassy Valley 1985 Oil on Canvas 90 x 95 cm This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ...

Photo-paintings and the Blur

Many of Richter's paintings are made in a multi-step process of representations. He starts with a photograph, which he has found or taken himself, and projects it onto his canvas, where he traces it for exact form. Taking his color palette from the photograph, he paints to replicate the look of the original picture. His hallmark "blur"—sometimes a softening by the light touch of a soft brush, sometimes a hard smear by an aggressive pull with his squeegee—has two effects: 1. It offers the image a photographic appearance; and 2. Paradoxically, it testifies the painter's actions, both skilled and coarse, and the plastic nature of the paint itself. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Look up Canvas in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

In some paintings blurs and smudges are severe enough to disrupt the image; it becomes hard to understand or believe. The subject is nullified. In these paintings, images and symbols (such as landscapes, portraits, and news photos) are rendered fragile illusions, fleeting conceptions in our constant reshaping of the world.

It is interesting to compare Richter's painting with the early work of Vija Celmins with whom he shares some similarities of subject and style. Vija Celmins (b. ...

Abstract Pictures

In his Abstract Pictures, Richter builds up cumulative layers of nonrepresentational painting. 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.

Richter’s abstract work is remarkable for the illusion of space that develops, ironically, 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.

Nearly all of Richter’s work demonstrates both illusionistic space that seems natural and the physical activity and material of painting—as mutual interferences. For Richter, reality is the combination of new attempts to understand—to represent; in his case, to paint—the world surrounding us.

Richter and Minimalism

Eight Grey by Gerhard Richter.

Throughout the body of Richter's work one can often observe waves of minimalism appearing often to disappear again. It may be noted that perhaps it may be necessary to view Richter as a conceptual artist wherein his individual pieces point towards a very painterly approach while possibly this may not be his intent. If one views the progressions in the individual series as single works a very different concept erupts. While many critics agree that this analysis may be necessary, let us take it one step further assuming that Richter's small series is analogous to his entire body of work, one sees the same images of realism to blur. For example Eight Grey 2002. It may be considered thus his interest is in the progression, not the individual images nor the qualities of paint nor any other medium he uses. In this a new idea of minimalism is born, a minimalism where the material means nothing however its use is technically masterful. As was said by Jan Van Eyck in the inscription on the frame of Man in the Red Turban "Als Ich Kann" which are the first words of the proverb "As I can, but not as I would." Eight Gray (Acht Grau), 2002. ... Eight Gray (Acht Grau), 2002. ... Portrait of a Man in a Turban (actually a chaperon), probably a self-portrait, painted 1433 Jan van Eyck or Johannes de Eyck (c. ...

Quotes

“One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is idiocy.” (From Richter, 'Notes 1973', in The Daily Practice of Painting, p.78.)

"Accept that I can plan nothing."^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Red Army Faction (Portrayed in a significant work of Richter's)

Red Army Fraction Insignia - a Red Star and a Heckler & Koch MP5 The Red Army Faction (also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group [or Gang] in German: Rote Armee Fraktion or simply RAF), was one of postwar West Germanys most active and prominent militant left-wing groups. ...

External links

• Official website, comprehensive image database, biography, literature list and timeline for Gerhard Richter
• Poster Editions sales website for select Gerhard Richter works
• Guggenheim: Gerhard Richter
• Gerhard Richter Archive (State Art Collections Dresden, Germany)
• Marian Goodman: Gerhard Richter
• Available Paintings and Works on Paper Galerie Ludorff, Duesseldorf, Germany
• Jerry Saltz: Gerhard Richter
• http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_10_40/ai_87453042/pg_1 Artforum: Gerhard Richter Essay]
• Essay
• NY Times Interview (registration required)
• SFMOMA - Gerhard Richter Making sense of modern art

• actual exhibitions with Gerhard Richter
• Take a picture... Umpteen Grey (to Gerhard Richter)
• Gerhard Richter news, books and exhibition
• Current exhibitions and connection to galeries at Artfacts.Net
• Review of Gerhard Richter Atlas exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery London, 2003
• Bibliography Photopaintings : Atlas and 18. Oktober 1977

Biographies and Ressources on Gerhard Richter

• Jürgen Harten (ed.): "Gerhard Richter. Paintings 1962–1985". With a catalogue raisonné from Dietmar Elger 1962–1985, Cologne 1986. (In German)
• Angelika Thill: "Catalogue raisonné since 1962". In: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH (ed.): "Gerhard Richter", Ostfildern-Ruit 1993. (Mrs. Thill offers the now accepted catalogue raisonné between 1963 and 1993, without Gerhard Richter's early works before 1962 after 1993, in German)
• 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.
• 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)
• Dietmar Elger: "Gerhard Richter. Painter," Cologne (Dumont-Biography) 2002. (In German) ISBN 3832158480
• Robert Storr: "Gerhard Richter, Painting," Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2002. (In German) ISBN 3775711694
• Dietmar Elger: "Gerhard Richter, Landscapes", Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2002. ISBN 3775791019
• Hubertus Butin/Stefan Gronert: "Gerhard Richter. Editions 1965-2004". Catalogue raisonné, Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2003/2004. ISBN 3775714308
• Jürgen Schilling: "Gerhard Richter. A private collection", Duesseldorf 2004. (In German) ISBN 3937572007
• Hans-Ulrich Obrist: "Gerhard Richter. 100 paintings", Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2005. (In German) ISBN 3893228519
• Juergen Schreiber: "A painter from Germany". Gerhard Richter. A family drama, München and Zürich (Pendo publishers) 2005. (In German) ISBN 3866120583
• 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.
• Ernst Hohenthal: "A familiy secret in the public domain". New revelations about Gerhard Richter's Herr Heyde, in: Christies's Magazine, November 2006, New York and London 2006, ISSN 0266-1217 Vol. XXIII. No.5, S 62 f.
• 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.

External links

• Official website