Gerhard Richter (Dresden, 1932 – ) experienced the Second World War during his childhood. From the time of the German occupation, Richter recalls the sudden availability of a large number of books, taken from the homes of the upper classes and made accessible to everyone by the Russian army as they advanced. It was precisely this endless supply of illustrated books that inspired Richter to make his first drawing and study art, initially through collections of prints by Velázquez, Dürer, and Corinth that he came across from time to time.
His interest in art began to take shape through early experiments: landscapes, self-portraits, and reproductions of printed images. In 1947, Richter enrolled in an evening painting course, and in 1950 he was hired as a stage set painter for the theater in Zittau. After being dismissed shortly thereafter, he applied to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and was admitted in 1951. In 1961, he applied to the Düsseldorf Academy, which had a more progressive teaching philosophy and would allow him to better engage with Western art—an opportunity that materialized in the works he produced during this period, many of which he later destroyed himself.
These works were painted in a hybrid style, drawing from influences like Dubuffet, Giacometti, and Tàpies. Düsseldorf Academy, beyond being a hub for Informal painting, would soon become the center of Fluxus activity, particularly under Joseph Beuys, who was appointed professor shortly after Richter’s arrival. The artistic scene extended beyond the academy’s walls, with a dynamic community of artists and a vibrant program of exhibitions and events in Düsseldorf and nearby Cologne, enriched by the presence of the ZERO group founded by Otto Piene and Heinz Mack in 1957. At the academy, Richter joined the group led by Karl Otto Götz, which attracted the brightest students; here, he met Sigmar Polke, Konrad Fischer, and Blinky Palermo.
Richter’s first exhibition, aside from academy shows, was with Manfred Kuttner at the Junge Kunst gallery in Fulda, a town near the East German border. In May 1963, Richter, Lueg, Polke, and Kuttner exhibited together in a vacant shop space rented from the city administration in Düsseldorf’s old town. In October of the same year, Richter and Lueg organized an exhibition and performance in a furniture store titled Living with Pop: A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism.
Richter’s strong interest in current events, consumer culture, media, and pop culture began to surface more clearly in paintings such as Party (1963), Table (1962), President Johnson Consoling Mrs. Kennedy (1963), and Folding Dryer (1962). These works marked the beginning of his main artistic inquiry: using photographs as the basis for painting—an approach that was still inconceivable in academic contexts at the time. With this new path, Richter began exploring the relationship between photography and painting, producing his first blurred images in 1963, such as Pedestrians and Alster. In 1964, he painted a series of bomber planes and intensified his production of portraits—mostly black and white—based on newspaper photos or found images, including family snapshots. That same year, he exhibited at Galerie Friedrich & Dahlem, a few months later with Alfred Schmela, and finally had a solo show with René Block.
Although Richter liked to choose varied and often provocative subjects, he was particularly drawn to recurring themes that would emerge more clearly over the years: military aircraft, family portraits (his own and others), and groups of people. Works like The Liechti Family, Gathering, and Hunting Party reflect this. Like Andy Warhol’s Disasters series, Richter revealed a morbid fascination with suffering and the media’s exploitation of it. This is evident in early works such as Dead (1963), Pallbearers (1962), and Woman with Umbrella (1964). The themes of death and crime continued in later paintings like Uncle Rudi (1965), Aunt Marianne, Mr. Heyde, and Mature Helga(1966).
In 1966, Richter began exhibiting internationally, first at Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome and then at Bruno Bischofberger’s City-Galerie in Zurich. This year also marked the introduction of a new tool: geometric abstraction, and the start of his depictions of the female figure, as seen in Ema (Nude on a Staircase). In 1967, he began painting aerial views of cities and towns such as Milan’s Piazza del Duomo, Madrid, and Paris. The 1960s ended positively in many ways: although Richter still had doubts about his artistic direction, he had his first public institution show in 1969 at Gegenverkehr e.V. – Zentrum für aktuelle Kunst in Aachen, along with solo exhibitions at René Block’s gallery and the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan, and group shows in Germany, Switzerland, and New York.
By the late 1960s, Richter felt the need to organize the visual material he had collected over the years, which led to the creation of the Atlas, exhibited repeatedly over the years, including at Documenta X in 1997. In the early 1970s, he returned to geometric abstraction, adding randomness to his color choices. From this came works like 192 Colors, 4 Colors, 4096 Colors, 1024 and 1025 Colors. During the late ’60s and ’70s, he also experimented with gray monochromes, known simply as Greys, and occasionally returned to figurative painting, exploring themes like landscapes and portraits, including those presented at the 1972 Venice Biennale (48 Portraits, 1971–72).
In the early 1980s, figurative painting made a comeback, particularly through Neo-Expressionism (or Neue Wilde, as it was called in Germany). In the U.S., Philip Guston and Julian Schnabel were key figures, while in Germany it was Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer. The 1982 exhibition A New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy in London brought together all these artists, including Richter. However, the most important photo-painting series of the decade was October 18, 1977 (1988), a cycle of 15 works referencing the end of the Red Army Faction. Also notable is Betty (1988), a portrait of his eldest daughter.
By the late 1980s, Richter had become an internationally renowned painter, with his works increasingly sought after on the secondary market. His first major retrospective opened in 1986 at the Städtische Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, traveling to Berlin, Bern, and Vienna. At the same time, Richter began long-term collaborations with Marian Goodman in New York and Anthony d’Offay in London.
In the early 1990s, building on earlier experiments, Richter focused on mirrors and glass, creating works such as Mirror, Grey, Mirror, Blood Red, and Corner Mirror, Green-Red. In 1992, he began producing paintings dominated by stripes and grids—a theme first touched on in 1972 with the Red-Blue-Yellow series and later expanded into the Bach series (1992), which paved the way for significant future cycles, including Cage (2006), shown in 2008 at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. In 2009, a new retrospective opened at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, while during that decade he completed major photo-paintings like Hahnwald (1997), Orchid (1998), Marina (1998), and Summer Day (1999).
The desire to merge photography with abstraction and figuration came through in the Florence series (2000), where he returned to painting over photographs, echoing some of his work from the 1980s. The year 2002 marked a major moment with the retrospective Forty Years of Painting at MoMA, featuring 190 works. In 2005, Richter created September, in response to the World Trade Center attacks, and in 2007, he completed the stained-glass window commission for Cologne Cathedral, begun in 2002.
To celebrate his 80th birthday, the Tate Modern in London, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris hosted the major retrospective Gerhard Richter: Panorama (2011–2012), honoring one of the most prolific artists of the modern era.
