Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter (1932, Dresden) is one of the most important contemporary artists.

In the Art Compass, the prestigious ranking of the world's most sought-after contemporary artists published by Capital magazine, Richter has held first place for years. He is one of the most expensive living contemporary artists. Richter's works can be found in the world's most prestigious museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London and the Museum Folkwang in Essen.

Richter studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1951-1961, fled to West Germany in 1961 and continued his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy until 1964, among others with Karl Otto Götz. Between 1971 and 1993 he taught there himself as a professor of painting. His companions at the academy included Günther Uecker and Gotthard Graubner.

Gerhard Richter's oeuvre is more multifaceted than almost any other. Richter has, for example, placed glass installations in space, designed windows of the Cologne Cathedral, painted over photographs or created abstract paintings. Due to the variance in his oeuvre, his works are full of contradiction and discontinuity in reception: from blurred paintings based on photographs, photorealistic depictions of nature, paintings of the highest abstraction to glass and mirror objects and installations. All these themes are not found one after the other as developmental strands of his oeuvre, but the artist takes up these diverse approaches again and again. The cohesion is provided by Gerhard Richter's experimental and exploratory engagement with the present.

"Good pictures are also incomprehensible." - Gerhard Richter