Early Years
Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932, where he lived until 1961. From 1951 to 1956, he attended the Kunst Akademie Dresden, and then the Kunst Akademie Düsseldorf between 1961 until 1963. Richter is regarded as one of the essential contemporary artists. Over the previous five decades, his enormous and diversified body of work has garnered significant international acclaim. Throughout his long career, he has addressed painting via a broad and varied spectrum of concepts that have included realism focuses on found images and pictures, squeegee abstractions, two- and tri-glass pieces, abstract painting, and drawings, and retouched photographs of everyday life. His art has continuously had a significant impact on numerous generations and his brand image.
Education and Onset of His Career
While learning at the Kunst Akademie Düsseldorf, Ritcher started experimenting with the media of photography and painting to probe the fundamental essence of painting. Table, which he considers to be his first adult artwork, was produced in 1962 and addressed the conflict between photography, abstraction, and naturalism, all of which continue to inspire his work (Ansted). This exploration eventually resulted in the incorporation of surrealism into his paintings, beginning with his textured grey monochromes.
Throughout his career, he has taught painting, and his artwork has fetched record-breaking prices at auctions. His influences include Caspar David Friedrich, Fluxus, and Art Informel. Richter has declared that he does not abide by a specific art style since he considers it a bad idea. However, his photorealist and abstracted paintings are indisputably identifiable. As seen by his abstract pieces, he has maintained a very experimental methodological approach to his creative creation.
Achievements and Awards
Gerhard Richter has garnered various honors over his career. He has achieved recognition from multiple nations globally, as depicted in his awards. In 1985, he was awarded the Oskar Kokoschka Prize in Vienna. He was awarded the Staatspreis der Stadt Goslar award in 2000 in Germany; He also achieved the Premium Imperiale Award in 1997, which he was awarded in Japan. Additionally, in 1997, He earned the Golden Lion of the 47th Biennale award in Venice. To sum up his successful year, he was awarded the Kaiserring Prize der Stadt Goslar award in Germany. Lastly, in 2018, Ritcher was awarded the Europäischer Kulturpreis (European Cultural Award Taurus) in Dresden for his lifetime achievements.
Exhibitions
Gerhard Richter has had various significant solo exhibitions. In 2018, he orchestrated a collection at the Museum Wiesbaden in Germany and the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany. 2017 marked a considerable exhibition year where Ritcher had solo exhibitions in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, the Stedelijk Museum Voor Actuele Kunst in Gent, Belgium, and the Queensland Art Gallery Brisbane, Australia. Additionally, in 2017, his artwork was displayed in the Espace Louis Vuitton in Beijing, China, and the Frieder Burda in Baden (Tate). He has been shown internationally since the late 1950s. He has had a couple of traveling commemorative exhibitions, the latest of which traveled from London’s Tate Modern to Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie and Paris’s Centre Pompidou (2011-2012).
Collaborations with Filmmakers and other Artists
Richter collaborated with Corinna Belz in two movies based on his 2012 novel Patterns in 2016 and 2019. When displayed, the earlier work, Richters Patterns, is accompanied by a musical composition by the German songwriter Marcus Schmickler and the latter by the American artist Steve Reich, both delivered by a live group. Reich Richter’s subsequent work, in turn, is part of broader two-section cooperation. Part of which was developed for the debut season at The Shed in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards development.
Abstract painting, 780-1
As the title implies, Abstract painting, 780-1, is among Richter’s countless abstract paintings. Richter has slathered a 260 by 200-centimeter canvas with dense technicolor painting. In Abstraction Painting, 780-1, a leap from his previous abstract works characterized by grey textured monochromes. Richter is recognized for his unique painting and drawing skills. He used squeegees to spread paint over the canvas, creating various textures and pigment thicknesses in this work. The pigment has been brushed over the canvas many times, creating layers (Ansted). Colorful patches blend into one another via the blur of yellowish vertical stripes, intertwining layers and patterns and providing the appearance of depth to this mess of paint.
Blurring the lines between painting and other media
This blur is a concept that Richter employs in various ways in his figurative works and his overpainted photographs. Indeed, Richter uses the idea of blurring to subvert the binary of modern art and the debate that surrounds it. Instead of keeping abstraction and figurative artwork as absolute opposites, he blurs, confounds, and combines them (Wangstaff et al). He confirmed that he “blur(s) everything to render all aspects of the artwork comparable, equally essential and also equally unimportant.” Blurring is critical to comprehending Richter’s interplay across photography as well as painting as mediums. Additionally, it is his method for creating quick and distinct art pieces focused on emotion. Though imprecise, this visual technique achieves these effects due to the blur’s propensity to break established representational linkages, such as those seen in similarity and imitation.
Richter’s work outperforms pictures based on standard mimetic schemas in terms of indicating strength. Ideally, this blurring reveals nothing but simultaneously creates a tension between what is seen and what cannot be seen but is only perceived via felt experience (Metropolitan Museum). Through this dissemblance, the blur makes the most direct meaning: so immediate, spontaneous, and unique as to be actual. While one may argue that we have reached a post-medium situation for art, Richter proves that medium is crucially essential to craft today. He demonstrates, in particular, how media define one another and how this is critical to their usage and function.
Gerhard Richter’s experimentation methods
Richter’s expressive approach to abstraction emphasizes the material and the process of painting, examining the intrinsic features of the painting itself. Richter analyzes the chronology of paintings, from idealism and its obsession with the sublime and poetic to the geometric principles of an early abstract concept, with a certain sarcasm throughout his abstract creations, like Abstract Painting, 780-1 (National Gallery of Art). His rough, scraped surfaces imply depth, hinting at a relationship between imagery and abstraction.
Richter frequently uses the title of his works to allude to a depth far beyond the abstract surface, yet in Abstract Painting, 780-1, his immediate attention stays in the conceptual world of Abstract Painting (Ross Toni). Without being overly simplistic, Abstract Painting, 780-1 encapsulates a central concern in Richter’s revolutionary investigative process into painting: the tension between suppression and revelation, as well as the power of drawing to explore much greater depth than the channel itself, into historical, social, and philosophical issues.
Works Cited
Wagstaff, Sheena, et al. Gerhard Richter – Painting After All. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2020.
Ross Toni. “Stimulating Thinking, Feeling and Seeing: Gerhard Richter at GOMA.” Art Monthly Australasia, no. 305, pp. 56–60.
Ansted, Darryn. The Artwork of Gerhard Richter: Painting, Critical Theory and Cultural Transformation. Routledge, 2017.
Tate. “Gerhard Richter.” Org.Uk, Web.
Metropolitan Museum. “Between Figuration and Abstraction.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2020, Web.
National Gallery of Art. “Abstract Painting 780-1.” National Gallery of Art, Web.