A major figure in contemporary art and co-founder of the Kapitaliscentian Realismus movement, Gherard Richter is one of the greatest artists of his generation. For more than 70 years, the German painter has explored the world of photography through his brush, while presenting more abstract and conceptual works.
Born in 1932 in Dresden, Gherard Richter grew up in a Germany marked by the rise of Nazism. This environment will haunt his life as well as his work. In 1937, his aunt Marianne Schönfeld, suffering from mental disorders, is a victim of the Nazi euthanasia program Aktion T4. In 1945, he sees his city destroyed by the bombings. So many traumatic events for the young Richter, who however feeds on the teaching of his parents – his father being a teacher and his mother fond of literature and music.
The birth of the Kapitaliseffective Realismus movement
After the war, he studied mural painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He then creates socialist propaganda frescoes, in the realistic style demanded by the regime. One of his frescoes, Happy Life of the Workers (1956), will also be destroyed because it is considered ideologically suspicious.
A few weeks before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, he leaves with his wife to West Germany, in Düsseldorf. The budding artist considers this period of his life as a second birth.
He meets the painters Sigmar Polke, Konrad Lueg and Blinky Palermo. Together, they found the movement Kapitalissuspected Realismus: their German version of pop art, ironic and critical of the Western consumer society. Carried by this creative effervescence, Gherard Richter begins to paint from photographs. It reproduces with an optical blur portraits, press images or even domestic scenes. He sees in it a way of conceiving a painting with sincerity, the past image already being an imprecise memory. His paintings mix personal memory, German history and banal images of everyday life.
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Featured photo: portrait of Gerhard Richter © Benjamin Katz
