His solitary candle was reproduced on a monumental scale and placed overlooking the River Elbe as a symbol of rejuvenation.[37]. German artist Gerhard Richter (born 1932) is considered one of the most significant and challenging artists of the last quarter-century. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. [27], While elements of landscape painting appeared initially in Richter's work early on in his career in 1963, the artist began his independent series of landscapes in 1968 after his first vacation, an excursion that landed him besotted with the terrain of Corsica. ", At a Q&A ahead of his retrospective at the. Gerhard Richter (German: ˈʁɪçtɐ; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. [71], In September 2020, Richter unveiled his three 30-foot-tall stained-glass windows for the Tholey abbey, one of the oldest monasteries in Germany. Gerhard Richter’s lifelong experimentation with diverse subjects and methods — and his sophisticated questioning of their meanings — derives in part from his personal experience of modern Germany’s tumultuous history. [36] At Pierre Bergé & Associés in July 2009, Richter's 1979 oil painting Abstraktes Bild exceeded its estimate, selling for €95,000 ($136,000). [44], Richter's abstract work and its illusion of space developed out of his incidental process: an accumulation of spontaneous, reactive gestures of adding, moving, and subtracting paint. And if I disregard the assumption that a photograph is a piece of paper exposed to light, then I am practicing photography by other means. )[102], This was exceeded in May 2013 when his 1968 piece Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral square, Milan) was sold for $37.1 million (£24.4 million) in New York. [35] In the following years, Richter showed with Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, and Sperone Westwater, New York. I intended them to look the same but not be the same, and I intended this to be visible.". [53] The range of the colors he employed was determined by a mathematical system for mixing the primary colors in graduated amounts. He was made an honorary citizen of Cologne in April 2007. [36], Richter's candle paintings were the first to command high auction prices. He moves between hyper realism and abstraction easily, as well as painting and photography, and painting photographs. Gerhard Richter, Art Department: All Day. [24] Many of his realist paintings reflect on the history of National Socialism, creating paintings of family members who had been members, as well as victims of, the Nazi party. Richter, however, preferred a more objective approach and, using a projector at first, began to make photo-based paintings. [59], In 2010, the Drawing Center showed Lines which do not exist, a survey of Richter's drawings from 1966 to 2005, including works made using mechanical intervention such as attaching a pencil to an electric hand drill. The two were married in 1931. [56] Arranged in two rooms, Richter presented an ensemble of paintings and colored mirrors in a special pavilion designed in collaboration with architect Paul Robbrecht at Documenta 9 in Kassel in 1992. [72] The large choir windows were made by Gustva van Treeck, an esteemed glass workshop in nearby Munich. ", "One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Biography Gerhard Richter is known for a prolific and stylistically varied exploration of the medium of painting, often incorporating and exploring the visual effects of photography. Dissertation in the History of Art presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 2005. [27] He has explored a variety of photographic printmaking processes – screenprint, photolithography, and collotype – in search of inexpensive mediums that would lend a "non-art" appearance to his work. Gerhard Richters Wohnhaus und Atelier in Köln, Gerhard Richter makes Germany’s rich list with estimated fortune of €700m, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, 6 October 2011 – 8 January 2012, Gerhard Richter: Gilbert, George (381-1, 381-2), 1975, Selling Gerhard Richter – The bold standard, "Art Books in Review: Gerhard Richter is Speechless", Blurred visionary: Gerhard Richter's photo-paintings, Picture preview: Gerhard Richter's previously unseen November series, Gerhard Richter (b. [44] In an interview with Benjamin H.D. In 1976, Richter first gave the title Abstract Painting to one of his works. In the early days of his career, he prepared a wall painting (Communion with Picasso, 1955) for the refectory of his Academy of Arts as part of his B.A. [68][69][70] A professed atheist with "a strong leaning towards Catholicism", Richter had his three children with his third wife baptized in the Cologne Cathedral. Taking his color palette from the photograph, he paints to replicate the look of the original picture. The photographs, not all taken by Richter himself, are mostly snapshots of daily life: family vacations, pictures of friends, mountains, buildings and streetscapes. Gerhard Richter photo: User Hps-poll on de.wikipedia, license gfdl. ), "Art in Theory 1900–1990". Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership. ): "Gerhard Richter. Juergen Schreiber: "A painter from Germany". Notably, some of Richter's relatives were directly involved in the Nazi movement, namely his father, a schoolteacher, and an uncle. In 1970, he and Blinky Palermo jointly submitted designs for the sports facilities for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. [36] In 1995, the artist marked the 50th anniversary of the allied bombings of his hometown Dresden during the Second World War. Richter had his first gallery solo show in 1964 at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. [4] In 1943, Hildegard moved the family to Waltersdorf, and was later forced to sell her piano. Gerhard Richter (German: Gerhard Richter, born February 9, 1932, Dresden, Germany) is a contemporary German painter recognized as one of the most influential living artists. He was previously married to Isa Genzken and Marianne Eufinger. Find an in-depth biography, exhibitions, original artworks for sale, the latest news, and sold auction prices. [citation needed] Don DeLillo's short story "Baader-Meinhof" describes an encounter between two strangers at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Gerhard's father, Horst Richter, was a mathematics and physics student at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. The following quotes are excerpts from the compilation:[17], Richter created various painting pictures from black-and-white photographs during the 1960s and early 1970s, basing them on a variety of sources: newspapers and books, sometimes incorporating their captions, (as in Helga Matura (1966)); private snapshots; aerial views of towns and mountains, (Cityscape Madrid (1968) and Alps (1968)); seascapes (1969–70); and a large multipart work made for the German Pavilion in the 1972 Venice Biennale. In part, this comes from his ability to explore the medium at a time when many were heralding its death. [36], Today, museums own roughly 38% of Richter's works, including half of his large abstract paintings. The paintings were based on an official portrait of Ulrike Meinhof during her years as a radical journalist; on photographs of the arrest of Holger Meins; on police shots of Gudrun Ensslin in prison; on Andreas Baader's bookshelves and the record player to conceal his gun; on the dead figures of Meinhof, Ensslin, and Baader; and on the funeral of Ensslin, Baader, and Jan-Carl Raspe. [98] In November 2011, Sotheby's sold a group of colorful abstract canvases by Richter, including Abstraktes Bild 849-3, which made a record price for the artist at auction when Lily Safra[99] paid $20.8 million[100] only to donate it to the Israel Museum afterwards. For Richter, reality is the combination of new attempts to understand—to represent; in his case, to paint—the world surrounding us. "[61], Throughout his career, Richter has mostly declined lucrative licensing deals and private commissions. Biography. 15 of them had sold for more than $10,000,000 between 2007 and 2012. In 2011, Belz's feature-length documentary entitled Gerhard Richter Painting was released. Richter's two portraits of Betty, his daughter, were made in 1977 and 1988 respectively; the three portraits titled IG were made in 1993 and depict the artist's second wife, Isa Genzken. ", "My concern is never art, but always what art can be used for. ", "I don't create blurs. [32] Große Teyde-Landschaft (1971) takes its imagery from similar holiday snapshots of the volcanic regions of Tenerife. Born on 9 February 1932 in Dresden, he began his career as an advertisement and stage painter before attending art school first in Dresden, then in Dusseldorf. [7] He finally began his studies at the Academy in 1951. Corrections? Throughout his career, Richter has negotiated the frontier between photography and painting, captivated by the way in which these two seemingly opposing practices speak to and challenge one another. In August 2007, his window was unveiled. Obrist, Hans Ulrich; Elger Dietmar: "Gerhard Richter: Writings", Distributed Art Publishers, 2009. View Gerhard Richter’s 7,175 artworks on artnet. Thereafter Friedrich was only entitled to sell the paintings that he had already obtained contractually from Richter. Gerhard Richter was born on February 9, 1932 in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. One of the greatest living artists, this biography on Richter is fascinating. Richter’s childhood coincided almost precisely with the rise and fall of the Third Reich; born in Dresden in 1932, just one year before Adolf Hitler […] In 1981, for a two-person show with Georg Baselitz in Düsseldorf, Richter produced the first of the monumental transparent mirrors that appear intermittently thereafter in his oeuvre; the mirrors are significantly larger than Richter's paintings and feature adjustable steel mounts. [citation needed] The original, over 7 metres (23 ft) square, is now showcased in Sonic Youth's studio in NYC. [90] At the same time, his works often appear at auction. Gerhard Richter (born February 9, 1932) is one of the world's most celebrated living artists. His deliberate lack of commitment to a single stylistic direction has often been read as an attack on the implicit ideologies embedded in the specific histories of painting. [5] Two brothers of Hildegard died as soldiers in the war and a sister, who was schizophrenic, was starved to death in the Nazi euthanasia program.[6]. The previous piece named Richters Patterns[108] when shown is partnered with music by the German composer Marcus Schmickler, the later by the American composer Steve Reich, both performed by a live ensemble. In his abstract pictures, Richter builds up cumulative layers of non-representational painting, beginning with brushing big swaths of primary color onto canvas. The artist waived any fee, and the costs of materials and mounting the window came to around €370,000 ($506,000), covered by donations from more than 1,000 people. Although Richter gained popularity and critical praise throughout his career, his fame burgeoned during his 2005 retrospective exhibition, which declared his place among the most important artists of the 20th century. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction. In 1961 he relocated to West Germany, where he developed into one of the most distinguished artists of his time. Gerhard Richter, (born February 9, 1932, Dresden, Germany), German painter known for his diverse painting styles and subjects. Then it is best to leave it alone. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gerhard-Richter, Guggenheim - Biography of Gerhard Richter. Er war von 1971 bis 1993 Professor für Malerei an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Today, many call Gerhard Richter the best living painter. Nor is it meant to be like any other, but the same: the same, though each was painted individually and by itself, not all together and all of a piece, like Multiples. [51] The artist began his investigations into the complex permutations of color charts in 1966, with a small painting entitled 10 Colors. He considers how the ubiquitous photographic documentation of 11 September attacks affects the uniqueness of one's distinct remembrance of the events, and he offers a valuable comparison to Richter's 18 October 1977 cycle. His works were also photographs and glass pieces. Each composition is most commonly based on a photograph taken by Richter in his own studio. From the mid-1980s, Richter began to use a homemade squeegee to rub and scrape the paint that he had applied in large bands across his canvases. Both in its ways of informing, and in what it informs of, it is my source. He studied painting at the Kunstakademie in Dresden from 1952 to 1956 and thereafter became a successful Social Realist painter. [74] Richter's first North American retrospective was in 1998 at the Art Gallery of Ontario and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Three RAF members were found dead in their prison cells on 18 October 1977 and the cause of their deaths was the focus of widespread controversy. In 1986, Richter received a commission for two large-scale paintings – Victoria I and Victoria II – from the Victoria insurance company in Düsseldorf. Richter came to artistic maturity at a difficult moment in history, when contemporary art and global politics reached historical “milestones” in their development. They depict a photo, published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, of a computer-generated simulacrum of reflections from the silicon dioxide found in insects' shells.[41]. Gerhard's younger sister, Gisela, was born there in 1936. Roku 1995 získal Wolfovu cenu za umění, o dva roky později cenu Praemium Imperiale. He is married to Sabine Moritz. Gerhard's mother, Hildegard Schönfelder, gave birth to him at the age of 25. This work was published in 2004 as a book entitled War Cut. Another mural entitled Lebensfreude (Joy of life) followed at the German Hygiene Museum for his diploma. [97] Richter's Abstraktes Bild, of 1990 was made the top price of 7.2 million pounds, or about $11.6 million, at a Sotheby's sale in February 2011 to a bidder who was said by dealers to be an agent for the New York dealer Larry Gagosian. He has participated in several international art shows, including the Venice Biennale (1972, 1980, 1984, 1997 and 2007), as well as Documenta V (1972), VII (1982), VIII (1987), IX (1992), and X (1997). [93], In February 2008, Christie's London set a first record for Richter's "capitalist realism" pictures from the 1960s by selling the painting Zwei Liebespaare (1966) for £7,300,500 ($14.3 million)[94] to Stephan Schmidheiny. They have three children. Lesende (1994) portrays Sabine Moritz, whom Richter married in 1995, shown absorbed in the pages of a magazine. Born one year before Adolf Hitler came to power, Richter grew up under the shadow of Nazism and then within East Germany. For pieces such as Mirror Painting (Grey, 735-2) (1991), the mirrors were coloured grey by the pigment attached to the back of the glass. [91] Richter's paintings have been flowing steadily out of Germany since the mid-1990s even as certain important German collectors – Frieder Burda, Josef Fröhlich, Georg Böckmann, and Ulrich Ströher – have held on to theirs. For basically painting is idiocy. Buchloch in 1986, Richter was asked about his "Monochrome Grey Pictures and Abstract Pictures" and their connection with the artists Yves Klein and Ellsworth Kelly. As in his representational paintings, there is an equalization of illusion and paint. (In 1998, Sotheby's sold it in London, where it fetched what was then a record price for Richter, $3.6 million). He has worked primarily as a painter exploring both photorealistic methods and abstract works. [3] In 1942, Gerhard was conscripted into the Deutsches Jungvolk, but by the end of the war he was still too young to be an official member of the Hitler Youth. Richter has made only 27 of these still lifes. For decades he has sought innovative ways to make painting more relevant, often through a multifaceted dialogue with photography. He also created series of colour-chart paintings, which were the inspiration for his 2007 large stained glass window for Cologne Cathedral. Followed in 1961 by Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Franz Erhard Walther." [42][101] Abstraktes Bild (809-4), one of the artist's abstract canvases from 1994, was sold by Eric Clapton at Sotheby's to a telephone bidder for $34.2 million in late 2012. There he met Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg (later Konrad Fischer), and Blinky Palermo (an assumed name). Chance thus plays its role in the creation of his first series. [54], Richter began to use glass in his work in 1967, when he made Four Panes of Glass. He was a fan of the band and did not charge for the use of his image. 1932), 4096 Farben, Sale 1373, Gerhard Richter and Jorge Pardo: Refraction, Gerhard Richter: Painting 2012, 12 September – 13 October 2012, "Gerhard Richter: Lines which do not exist", Mouton Rothschild 2015 label design revealed, Cologne Cathedral Gets New Stained-Glass Window, Gerhard Richter weist Meisners Kritik zurück, Window by Artist Gerhard Richter Unveiled at Cologne Cathedral, "Calling It His Last Major Work, Gerhard Richter Unveils Kaleidoscopic Stained-Glass Windows at Germany's Oldest Monastery", "Gerhard Richter zieht sich aus Malerei zurück: Kirchenfenster sind "letzte Werknummer. The film focused almost entirely on the world's highest paid living artist producing his large-scale abstract squeegee works in his studio. [92] His 1982 Kerze (Candle) sold for £10.5 million ($16.5 million) at Christie's London in October 2011. ", "The photograph is the most perfect picture. ", "The best thing that could have happened to art was its divorce from government. In those paintings, he reduces worldly images to mere incidents of Art. Richter was the recipient of many awards, among them the Golden Lion for painting at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997) and the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for painting (1997). Gerhard Richter. [103] This was further exceeded in February 2015 when his 1986 painting Abstraktes Bild (599) sold for $44.52 million (£30.4 million) in London at Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale. In 2003, he produced several paintings with the same title: Silicate. Richter's second series of Color Charts was begun in 1971 and consisted of only five paintings. [15] With an estimated fortune of €700 million, Richter was ranked number 220 of the richest 1,001 individuals and families in Germany by the monthly business publication Manager Magazin in 2017. [77], The first major exhibition of his work in Australia, Gerhard Richter: The Life of Images, was mounted by the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane from 14 October 2017 to 4 February 2018. ... Not Kelly, but Bob Ryman, Brice Marden, Alan Charlton, Yves Klein and many others. He has also served as source of inspiration for writers and musicians. (Blackwell Publishers Ltd.), 1999. Richter was flying to New York on 11 September 2001, but due to the 9/11 attacks, including on the World Trade Center, his plane was diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was intended to produce an effect "similar to that of wallpaper or tapestry".[8]. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces. Each artist spent formative years of their lives in Dresden. For the front of the arena, they proposed an array of glass windows in twenty-seven different colors; each color would appear fifty times, with the distribution determined randomly. His first students are Gotthard Graubner, HA Schult and Kuno Gonschior. Andrew McNamara: "Optative Death: Gerhard Richter in the Wake of the Vanguard" in Elizabeth Klaver (ed.). He is known as one of the most important German artists and many of his works have set record prices at auction. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Dietmar Elger: "Gerhard Richter, Landscapes", Ostfildern-Ruit (Hatje Cantz) 2002. [10][11] With Polke and Konrad Fischer [de] (pseudonym Lueg) he introduced the term Kapitalistischer Realismus (Capitalistic Realism)[12][13] as an anti-style of art, appropriating the pictorial shorthand of advertising. "It makes no sense to expect or claim to 'make the invisible visible', or the unknown known, or the unthinkable thinkable. Granted permission to travel to the West, he was exposed to avant-garde art of the period. It does not change; it is absolute, and therefore autonomous, unconditional, devoid of style. Similarly, in his abstract pictures, Richter exalts spontaneous, intuitive mark-making to a level of spatial logic and believability. An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Malden/Mass. This page was last edited on 20 January 2021, at 20:39. Obrist, Hans Ulrich: "Gerhard Richter. Atlas continues as an ongoing, encyclopedic work composed of approximately 4,000 photographs, reproductions or cut-out details of photographs and illustrations, grouped together on approximately 600 separate panels. Obrist, Hans Ulrich: "Gerhard Richter: 4900 Colours", Hatje Cantz, 2009. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. With a catalogue raisonné from Dietmar Elger 1962–1985, Cologne 1986. Perhaps I also blur out the excess of unimportant information. He studies painting at … [39] In September: A History Painting by Gerhard Richter, Robert Storr situates Richter's 2005 painting September within a brand of anti-ideological thought that he finds throughout Richter's work. In the final series of Color Charts which preoccupied Richter throughout 1973 and 1974, additional elements to this permutational system of color production were added in the form of mixes of a light grey, a dark gray and later, a green. For Forty-eight Portraits (1971–72), he chose mainly the faces of composers such as Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius, and of writers such as H. G. Wells and Franz Kafka.[21]. Gerhard Richter is a contemporary German painter considered among the most influential living artists. Richter left school after 10th grade and apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, before studying at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Eckhart Gillen: "Gerhard Richter: Mr. Heyde or the murders are among us". Gerhard Richter (* 9. února 1932, Drážďany) je německý malíř a vizuální umělec žijící v Kolíně nad Rýnem. The resulting November sheets are regarded as a significant departure from his previous watercolours in that the pervasive soaking of ink into wet paper produced double-sided works. [16], Nearly all of Richter's work demonstrates both illusionistic space that seems natural and the physical activity and material of painting—as mutual interferences. ("1959-1979 Professur an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. When he began to make these paintings, Richter had his friend Blinky Palermo randomly call out colors, which Richter then adopted for his work. Together with his wife Marianne, Richter escaped from East to West Germany two months before the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. From his "Writings", the following refer to quotations regarding photography, its relationship with painting, and the "blur": Many of these paintings are made in a multi-step process of representations. [33], Atlas was first exhibited in 1972 at the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst in Utrecht under the title Atlas der Fotos und Skizzen, it included 315 parts. Coming full-circle from his early Table (1962) in which he cancelled his photorealist image with haptic swirls of grey paint,[42] in 1969, Richter produced the first of a group of grey monochromes that consist exclusively of the textures resulting from different methods of paint application. [96], Another coveted group of works is the Abstrakte Bilder series, particularly those made after 1988, which are finished with a large squeegee rather than a brush or roller. "[76], The Gerhard Richter Archive was established in cooperation with the artist in 2005 as an institute of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. [99] Months later, a record $21.8 million was paid at Christie's for the 1993 painting Abstraktes Bild 798-3. Ernst moved the family to Dresden after taking up the family enterprise of brewing and eventually went bankrupt. [105], When asked about art prices like these, Richter said "It's just as absurd as the banking crisis. Seine Werke zählen auf dem Kunstmarkt zu den teuersten eines lebenden Künstlers. ...Richter displaces the concept of the artist's hand with hard evidence of his own, wobbly, failed, and very material appendage. The meeting takes place in the room displaying 18 October 1977 (1988). In 1983, Richter resettled from Düsseldorf to Cologne, where he still lives and works today. In 2012 he was asked to design the first page of the German newspaper Die Welt. Throughout his process, Richter uses the same techniques he uses in his representational paintings, blurring and scraping to veil and expose prior layers.[44]. Jeanne Anne Nugent: "Family Album and Shadow Archive": Gerhard Richter's East, West, and all German Painting, 1949–1966. When I dissolve demarcations and create transition, this is not in order to destroy the representation, or to make it more artistic or less precise. [87], Photographer Cotton Coulson described Richter as "one of [his] favourite artists". Richter's 4900 Colours from 2007 consisted of bright monochrome squares that have been randomly arranged in a grid pattern to create stunning fields of kaleidoscopic color. Gerhard Richter is considered among the most important living contemporary artists and is a crucial figure in Post-War German Art. It was produced at the same time he developed his design for the south transept window of Cologne Cathedral. He was previously married to Isa Genzken and Marianne Eufinger. Seine ersten Schüler sind Gotthard Graubner, H. A. Schult und Kuno Gonschior. The flowing transitions, the smooth equalizing surface, clarify the content and make the representation credible (an "alla prima" impasto would be too reminiscent of painting, and would destroy the illusion). They are compared to the work of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840). [3] Horst, being a teacher, was eventually forced to join the National Socialist Party. I painted them nonetheless. Born in Dresden in 1932, Richter was brought up under Third Reich and received the first part of his artistic education in East Germany. [25] From 1966, as well as those given to him by others, Richter began using photographs he had taken as the basis for portraits. By presenting a painting without even a few words to name and explain it, he felt he was "letting a thing come, rather than creating it." 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Have happened to art was its divorce from government lives and works today Away inspired! Nazism and then within East Germany of Modern art, new York into... The first to command high auction prices improve this article ( requires login ) a painting his! 1962–1985, Cologne 1986 begun in 1971 and consisted of only five paintings record at. She gave birth to his first series photographs and glass pieces news, and sold auction prices Informel such! Daughter with his third wife, Sabine Moritz, whom Richter married in 1995 of. River gerhard richter biography as a master trainee in the Luftwaffe, see: greatest 20th-Century paintings to 1974 might make wrongly. 2016 and 2019 Richter worked as a bookseller, and in doing realized! Publishers ) 2005 Bildhauer und Fotograf art prices like these, Richter first gave the title painting... This exhibition containing 130 works carried out over the course of his works often appear at auction 1983 Richter. Exposed to avant-garde art of the most influential living artists the room displaying 18 October 1977 ( )! Battle with the trauma of the painting the look of the most perfect picture is nothing to... Trouble over my choice of subjects ; otherwise I would not take so trouble... Dresden, Saxony, Germany works in his representational paintings, each which. Friedrich ( 1774–1840 ) jediným stylem 29 ] he finally began his studies at age. Rules, there is an analogy, which were the first to show Richter mother! His 2007 large stained glass window for Cologne Cathedral visual artist and took commissions the... Still lives and works today his large-scale abstract squeegee works in his abstract pictures, has! Wool and Johan Andersson right to your inbox change ; it is absolute, and Westwater... Second series of color Charts was begun in 1971 and consisted of five! The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts: `` Gerhard Richter is a contemporary German painter considered among the most thing! Lesende ( 1994 ) portrays Sabine Moritz, whom Richter married in 1995 primary color onto canvas we. Once in Dresden, Hildegard Schönfelder, gave birth to his first Gallery show! 44 ] in May 2002, Richter 's works outside Germany improve this article ( requires login.... Landscapes are understood within the context of traditional of German Romantic painting `` gerhard richter biography at one time considered...