Gerhard Richter: A Famous German Contemporary Artist

Gerhard Richter is a renowned German contemporary artist, born in Dresden, in the Saxony region of germany on 9th February, 1932. He was brought up in Lower Silesia, Reichenau, and Waltersdorf in the hills of the Lusatian countryside.

During his studies at the Art Academy of Dresden in East Germany from 1952-1957, Richter painted a piece of wall art entitled, "Communion with Picasso", and a further mural painting "Lebensfruede" for the German Hygiene Museum, which was released in 1956. Two months prior to the building of the Berlin wall, Richter fled to West Germany where he continued his art studies at the city of Düsseldorf Arts Academy of the under the guidance of Karl Otto Gotz from 1961 to 1964.

Richter held his first solo exhibitions in 1964 at the galleries of Alfred Schmela in Düsseldorf and Heiner Friedrich in Munich. Richter's first public display of oil paintings on canvas revealed a style of painting based on photographs, a characteristic of Pop Art. But instead of only copying photographs and providing a realistic appearance, Richter blurred his paintings of photographs. Though the paintings were close to reality, the exact details of the depictions could never be remembered except for a blurred form. It was perhaps a representation of Richter's disbelief in any ideology, having lived through the Nazi period in his childhood and then seeing the spread of Communism.

Gerhard Richter was a contemporary artist who was not willing to stick on to any specific school of art. Austere photorealism, satirical pop, minimalism and pure abstraction are all reflected in many of his canvases. In the latter years of the 1960s, Richter's paintings, through their thick colour spots, reflected the photographic pattern. In the "Colour Charts" paintings, Richter employed the four primary colours as a strict adherence to the established system of determining colours. From 1972 to 1975 Richter worked on the a series of canvases entitled "Grey Paintings" that dealt with mainly dull experiments in paint application done in shades of grey. Richter also depicted a collection of intellectuals in "Forty-Eight Portraits".

As a conceptual artist, Richter has received both acclaims and criticisms. His art on canvas renders an abstract relationship between reality and illusion. His depictions include figures from family, newspaper pictures, ads and more. Richter had carried out many exhibitions throughout Europe and in the US, by the early 1970s. In 2002 he conducted his major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Along with his paintings on canvas, he worked on many sculptures, photographs and drawings. He had released a number of monographs, catalogues, and books about his artwork and many notes on painting. "4 Panes of Glass" (1967) and "Two Sculptures for a Room by Palermo" (1971) are his important sculptures.

Gerhard Richter received many accolades for his contribution to the world of contemporary art, and he was made an honorary citizen of Cologne in April 2007.