Gerhard Richter
(1932)
Artworks by Gerhard Richter
About Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential contemporary artists, known for a body of work that continually challenges the boundaries between abstraction and representation. Born in Dresden, Germany, Richter studied at the Kunstakademie in Dresden from 1952 to 1957 before relocating to West Germany in 1961, where he continued his studies at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Karl Otto Götz.
Richter first gained attention in the early 1960s with his photo-paintings, translating photographic images often drawn from personal snapshots or mass media into painted form. By blurring his subjects, he disrupted the perceived objectivity of photography and introduced a sense of ambiguity that became central to his practice. Over time, he developed a wide-ranging body of work that includes figurative paintings, abstract canvases, color charts, mirror pieces, and glass works, consistently resisting a single, unified style.
His international reputation grew steadily from the late 1960s onward. He represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1972 and participated in multiple editions of Documenta in Kassel. Major retrospectives have been organized by leading institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate in London, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. A landmark retrospective at Tate Modern in 2012 reaffirmed his central place in contemporary art, and subsequent exhibitions at institutions such as the Fondation Beyeler and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have continued to examine the breadth of his practice.
More recently, Richter has been the subject of a major retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2025–2026), one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of his work to date, bringing together more than 270 works spanning over six decades.
For decades, Richter has maintained a dominant presence in the global art market, with his paintings regularly achieving some of the highest prices for a living artist and setting major auction records, including a sale exceeding $46 million in 2015. In the later stages of his career, he gradually reduced his painting activity, turning more toward drawing and other forms, while remaining an enduring influence on contemporary art. He has lived and worked in Cologne since the 1980s, where his legacy continues to shape the discourse around painting, image-making, and the nature of visual truth.