Gerhard Richter is incredible. I first found out about his work when looking for books in the library. I really liked the work within it but I know feel that his work is really relevant to use within my sketchbook. Born in Dresden on the 9th of February 1932, Richter classed his family as a "average middle class family". However when his father, Horst was offered a job in Poland the family moved and Richter found the town tedious. Although boring, this town offered much more safety for the family, since the war had started within Germany. Richter's father was conscripted into the army, staying there for eleven years in because of being captured by allied forces and held within an American prison camp. He later returned in 1946, to his family who had moved to the village of Waltersdorf. Richter recalls his childhood as a mixture of emotions. His fondest memories being held in Dresden, where he recalls such things as his "great grandmothers sewing box made of armadillo skin" and other amazing tales. However Richter stated he did not like Waltersdorf, he did not feel as if he fit in within the town. Richter was notorious for being clever but had an ability to do awful at school. He dropped out of grammar school and attended a vocational school where he studied stenography, accounting and Russian. Richter also recalls that he did not enjoy living in Waltersdorf because he felt like an outsider, not being able to speak the local dialect meant that Richter struggled to make friends and fit in. In addition to that Richter was made to join the Hitler Youth, a institution in which many children were made to join at that time. Whilst Richter was not living in Germany at the time of the war, he was none the less affect by it. His family suffered the intensity of the war as his two brothers were killed during in action and his father had missed out on several vital years of development for Richter. He also lost his sister due mental health issues as she was starved to death in a psychiatric ward because of the policies of the Third Reich.
Richter's family was not the only way that he was affected by the war. Although Dresden was directly bombed, Richter can recall that Waltersdorf was very present within the war. The retreating German soldiers who brought back guns and discarded them became a infatuation with Richter. Often as a child he and his friends would take the guns and play within the woods, shooting them at each other. Whilst this may have seemed fun for Richter, Waltersdorf was affected by the invasions of Russians, leaving huge refugee camps, with little to nothing amounts of food to feed them, many ransacking and trenches left behind. This added to Richter's fascination with the army. Even as a child Richter understood the war, and states he can remember when Dresden was horrifically bombed. The end of the war took Richter from childhood into adolescence, where he was about to be brought up in the Soviet control Germany, a very different Germany. The years after the war were difficult, horrible for Richter but he did find the positive side of things. Once the Russian soldiers had control of Germany they raided the upper class and created a library out the books they found. Richter was enthralled, he was given the chance to learn, to read and he took it. Richter started to develop his love for art at the age of fifteen where he was taken to a Russian summer camp and he spent most of his time during it drawing. One the first drawings Richter did was off a nude figure that he had copied from a book. He also paint a lot of landscapes in water colours from the small village of Waltersdorf. However he did not decide to paint it because it's beauty, Richter painted out of anger. He could not communicate with people properly therefore felt like an outsider, so his took the anger he was building up and decided to started paint instead. In 1947 Richter began to attend painting classes but felt that he did not learn a lot from the teachers there.
After finishing the course Richter left his family and moved to Zittau to live in a youth hostel. Whilst Richter clearly had a talent and really adored art, he did not assume that his career would lead him to become a painter. At that time he avoid the subject and looked for work doing job such as forestry and dentistry. He eventually found work as a banner producer for the German Democratic Republic. Not exactly fine art but it was still a job. Richter was never actually got at paint the banners, instead he was made to clean the old dirty ones. Richter did not last long at this job, he was fired after he refused to paint the walls within the theatre. Straight after leaving he decided to apply to the Dresden Art Academy but was refused because of the lack of experience he had. He got a job and a reference, and once applying again Richter was accepted. I will apologize for the
length of this research of Richer so far, I can't just skim over Richter's life, picking out facts and putting them in a paragraph. I have to talk about him in detail and if it's hard for you to read then you won't understand why he produced the work he did, his childhood is a large influence in Richter's work therefore I have decided to analyze it as much as I can.
Richter return to Dresden to study at a Art academy, but Dresden was in ruins. It had been obliterated by bombing from the war, buildings were in halves, completely destroyed. Richter met his first wife within the academy who studied fashion and textiles. Richter decided to join the mural painting department and chose the teacher Lohmar, a man who was a fully committed communist but still remained a cosmopolitan figure to Richter. Since the war had just finished Richter was given little resources to work with, however he was able to visit Berlin and Western Germany at the time where he went to museums, theaters and watched many films. Richter became very interested by the concentration camps photos and the Russian uprise photographs that his tutor had provided him with. The pure emotion and shock factor could really inspire anyone to portray what had happened. Richter's graduation project was a large scale mural, in which he studied a topic on, for the Deutsches Hygiene Museum. For this piece Richter was awarded with a studio for three years and a distinction. In 1959 Richter visited "documenta 2" in which he was first introduced to abstract painters such as Jackson Pollock, this enlightened him, because he had felt as if his work was being restricted. Seeing the expressionist work, changed Richter's way of thinking completely. He soon moved out of East Germany to West Germany and enrolled in the local Art Academy there. This is where Richter began to experiment, he started to use a range of different methods and ways of creating his work. Richter disliked many of these painting and destroyed most of them but it established his presence within the Academy.
Richter soon had his first exhibition after this time, where he presented his work with two other people. His work gathered a lot of interest, Richter's work showed characteristics of his energy and curiosity. This spirit was shared by his fellow friends. Richter was highly interested by current affairs and this filtered throughout his paintings such as Table, 1962 and Folding Dryer, 1962 where the social media was featured within his work. Richter's break through, the thing that made him different was his use of photographic images. This gave him a pathway in which he took and began to experiment with making blurred photos paintings in black and white medias, often painting his family members. In 1964 Richter left the academy and was already in his path therefore began to produce much more work. Whilst Richter was producing work the start of pop art had began. Richter traveled to Paris to show his work and presented himself as a German pop artist. After creating much interest, in 1964 Richter had his first solo exhibition. After painting many photo realistic pieces Richter created his first print. It depicts a dog. In 1996, Richter began to paint colour charts which were considered as the brand new combination of minimalism and pop art. This is where Richter started to use abstraction within his work. Richter's pieces became more political. Richter began to present more exhibitions and he produced one of his most famous pieces, Ema, 1966. 1968 showed Richter painting landscapes, he was exploring abstraction in much more depth. This shows Richter trying to push his painting forward into the topic of abstraction.
The 1970's proved the real start for Richter's abstract pieces of work, in addition to that he was able to present some of his own photography when he exhibited at Museum Folkwang. Richter began to create more of the colour charts but this time using not referring to the industrial colour charts, however he did not come back to these until 2007, where he began to re-produce a larger range of them. "Park Piece" is where you can clearly see the change from figurative and photorealistic paint into the abstract paintings. 1977 is where Richter produced Abstraktes Bild, simply meaning abstract paintings. These were full of colour and movement, very different from the original work Richter had been creating. They were all investigations into patterns, textures, surfaces and techniques. Richter's work had completely changes over the decade, starting from creating grey monochrome pieces to later creating really colourful and powerful pieces of work. In the 1980's Richter had divorced his wife and remarried to Isa, a successful young artist. Whilst becoming known for his abstract pieces, Richter started to create work with candles as the center piece. He did not receive much recognition for them when first released, however they are now considered some of Richter's most iconic pieces. It showed his new approach toward photo realistic painting. As well as painting candles, Richter returned to painting landscapes, however started to create abstract landscapes layer on, showing how he was capable of creating abstract pieces, using them mind set of photo realistic images.
Soon after Richter produced some of his most political pieces. It was around the time that two German terrorists committed suicide and the RAF group, a group that oppressed and threatened the German Federal Republic, were killed. Although it was classed as suicide many people believed that they were killed by the state. Richter produced blurred paintings which showed the different events leading up to the deaths of these people. Richter did produce this work until ten years after the deaths but it still created tension with Germany as many people were divided on the piece produced. By the end of the 1980's Richter was known as one of the most prominent painter within Germany and much of the world. His abstract and photo realistic paintings maintained his high reputation and allowed him present his work throughout many exhibitions. During the 90's Richter brought together his use of mirrored work and colour charts to create Glass Window. This led Richter into creating many other pieces similar, varying in colours. However, Richter started to experiment in abstract style again producing many pieces such as Bach,1992. Since 1986, Richter had been experimenting with painting over photographs, in total he had produced over 700 of these photographs. This style of abstract painting allowed Richter to also include his love photos with his love for abstract painting, which he stated was a completely natural thing for him, like walking or breathing.
I feel should come to a stop with my research on Richter. I have looked at his childhood in depth and feel that this has helped me greatly to look at why he has produced the work he has. I really admire Richter's work, I cherish the way Richter can change the atmosphere of a painting completely by blurring parts of it out. I feel that his work relates to the topic of indistinct really well. Richter has highly influenced me and the way I will carry on with my studies.
https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/overpainted-photographs/people-74/untitled-9189-14305?&p=1&sp=32&tab=exhibitions-tabs
https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/oils-on-paper/untitled-15107/?&p=1&sp=32
https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/paintings/photo-paintings/candles-6/two-candles-6358/?
&p=1&sp=32
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