Gerhard Richter

German, b. 1932

Gerhard Richter (born 1932) is a contemporary German painter known for both his abstract and photorealistic paintings, as well as his photographs and glass sculptures. Richter’s paintings reference photos and images from a vast archive known as the Atlas. While living in East Germany under Soviet rule after World War II, he began producing Social Realist murals. Richter eventually fled to West Germany in 1961 and began studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. It was here that he started creating large-scale black and white photo realistic paintings with a “blurred” effect, meaning aspects of the paintings appeared smudged or smeared. In the decades... Show more