Richter began painting in the early 1950s when he studied at the Kunstakademie in Dresden.
During this time, the East German Communist regime imposed a Social Realist style on all practicing artists.
Richter was confined to painting landscapes and political banners commissioned by state-owned businesses.
Throughout his 60+ year career, Richter created an equal amount of both abstract and realist works.
And although the styles differ, one theme is constant: experimentation.
I want to leave everything as it is, he says.
I therefore neither plan nor invent; I add nothing and omit nothing.
But I don’t know that.
Read on to discover five of Richters famous works.
Here are five Gerhard Richter artworks you should know.
He was inspired by a collection of paint sample cards he found in a hardware store in Dusseldorf.
During the 70s, Richter stopped using paint chips as source material and began creating his own colors.
Some of his earliest works feature just four hues.
However, in 2007, the prolific creative produced a giant artwork featuring 4,900 colors.
Richter later revisited painting just four colors in 2008, marking the end of the decades-long series.
However, vibrant, bold paint strokes and tracks interrupt the window-like view.
The group carried out various crimes against the state that included bank robberies, bomb attacks, and assassinations.
They were eventually prosecuted by state police and collectively died by suicide in Stuttgart-Stammheim prison.
Richter simply wanted to remember the events and shed a light on the truth.
He said of the series, It can give us new insights.
And it can also be an attempt to consolethat is, to give a meaning.
The artist enjoys allowing the process to define how the final piece will take shape.
The spirit of experimentation is exactly what gives him exciting, unexpected results.
You should have a measure of uncertainty or perplexity, Richter was quoted saying.
It is more interesting to be insecure.
Moritz, 2000
ForMortiz, Richter depicts his own infant son.
Similar to the artist’s earlier photograph-inspired works, it blurs the line between abstraction and figuration.
Two seemingly unfinished areas of cloudy hues contrast against the realistically rendered portrait.
It almost appears as though youre looking through a fogged-up window, with the subject on the other side.
