b. 1932,
Dresden, Germany
Gerhard Richter was born February 9, 1932, in Dresden,
Germany. Between 1952 and 1957, he studied art at the
Kunstakademie, Dresden. The artist then moved to Düsseldorf,
where he worked as a photo-laboratory technician. From 1961
to 1964, Richter studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie
Düsseldorf under Karl Otto Götz.
Richter’s first solo show was held at the Möbelhaus
Berges, Düsseldorf, in 1963. Here the artist 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.
In 1967, Richter won the Junger Westen art prize from the
city of Recklinghausen, Germany. 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. In 1972, Richter’s work was chosen to
represent Germany at the Venice Biennale. That same
year, he participated in Documenta in Kassel, where
he showed again in 1977, 1982, and 1987. The artist gained
recognition in the United States in 1973 with a show at the
Reinhard Onnasch Gallery in New York. In 1976, his first
retrospective took place at the Kunsthalle Bremen, which
covered works from 1962 to 1974. Richter had a major
exhibition in 1978 at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum,
Eindhoven, entitled Abstract Paintings, which
traveled to the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1979.
In 1982, Richter was awarded the Arnold Bode Preis at
Documenta in Kassel and in 1985 the Oskar Kokoschka
Prize in Vienna. In 1988, the artist was given his 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. Richter has been a
professor at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since
1971. In 1983, the artist moved to Cologne, where he still
resides.