Painter Gerhard Richter

Richter is one of the most influential contemporary painters.

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"I was surprised by photography, which we all use so massively everyday. Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional criteria I had always associated with art...For the first time, there was nothing to it; it was pure picture. That's why I wanted to have it, to show it-not to use it as a means to painting but use painting as a means to photography."

Samples

Samples and bio (in German)
Gerhard Richter in Computer garden (in German with bio data)

Links

From his private journal
Images
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Exhibits of Richter's work online
When I look at a painting by Richter ...

Bio - Gerhard Richter

Born in February 9, 1932 at Dresden, former East Germany.

1949-1952 advertisement and stage painter in Zittau.

1952-1957, he studied art at the Kunstakademie, Dresden.

1961- moved to Düsseldorf, where he worked as a photo-laboratory technician.

1961- start of "Atlas," an archive of photographs and other materials from

1945 to the present that he collected as sources for his work. It is a work in progress and contains nearly 5.000 images to date. "Atlas" is an intimate diary as well as an archive and includes photographs of family and friends, concentration camps, pornography, cityscapes, flowers, news photographs, etc., as well as sketches and fragments of paintings.

1961-1963, he studied under K. O. Götz at the Academy of Fine Art, Düsseldorf.

1963 - first solo show at the Möbelhaus Berges, Düsseldorf. Introduced his photo-painting style, in which he employed his own photographs of landscapes, portraits, and still lifes as a basis for his paintings. The artist blurred the depicted subjects or objects, deviating from traditional figurative painting in order to distinguish painting from photography.

1964- exhibitions at the Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich, Galerie Alfred Schmela, Düsseldorf, and Galerie René Block, Berlin. From 1962 onwards he used amateur photographs, advertisements and book magazine illustrations as models for his photographic realism, and used his own photographs from 1968.

1967- guest teacher at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste, Hamburg, and won the Kunstpreis Junger Westen, Recklinghausen, that same year. It was at this time that the artist began his "Constructive" phase, which included the Color Charts, Inpaintings, Gray Paintings, and Forty-eight Portraits, as well as his work with mirrors.

1968 to 1969- school art teacher.

1971- professor at the Staatliche Kunstakademie (Academy of Fine Art), Düsseldorf.

1971- retrospective at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen.

1972- exhibition of his photographic technique at Utrecht.

1972 - Venice Biennale, 48 Portraits, which subsequently went on tour. Participated in Documenta in Kassel, where he showed again in 1977, 1982, and 1987.

1972-1987 - documenta exhibitions "5", "6", "7" and "8".

1973 - recognition in the United States for a show at the Reinhard Onnasch Gallery in New York.

1974- exhibited his grey paintings at the Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach.

1976 - first retrospective at the Kunsthalle Bremen and in Brussels, which covered works from 1962 to 1974. Another retrospective in 1977 at the Centre Pompidou.

1978 - major exhibition at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, entitled Abstract Paintings, which traveled to the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1979.

1978 - abstract paintings at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. He also became guest teacher at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada.

1978-1981- exhibited in London, New York, Rome, Essen, Eindhoven and Düsseldorf.

1982 - awarded the Arnold Bode Preis at Documenta in Kassel.

1983- moved to Cologne, where he still resides.

1985- Oskar Kokoschka Prize.

1986 - the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf organized a retrospective of Richter's complete work (with inventory and catalog), which was later shown at Berlin, Bern and Vienna.

1988 - first North American retrospective, which was co-organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. The exhibition traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

2002 - 70th birthday anniversary exhibition in Berlin.