| |
|
|
|
|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Gerhard Richter – the 75th Birthday of the Chameleon of Art
Many call him the best living painter today. Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden on February 9, 1932, and studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1960s. With paintings of regular images, Richter has tried to subvert the hierarchy of art and the everyday. His work is full of inconsistencies and dissonance. The only constant in his work is that he has always been experimenting with reality and carrying out research about it. Many call him the best living painter today. He has thrice been awarded first place in the world ranking of living artists by the German economics magazine “Capital.” One of his works, “Mailänder Dom,” recently sold for 2.8 million euros. Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden on February 9, 1932, and after the war, grew up in the former German Democratic Republic. Like many Germans of his generation, his relatives were involved in the Nazi movement. His mother’s brother Rudi died a young Nazi officer and his mentally disabled aunt was imprisoned in a Hitler euthanasia camp. His first wife’s father was a member of the SS and responsible for compulsory sterilization during World War II, a fact that Richter did not learn until after he had married. In 2004, Richter went public about the tragic aspects of his life. From Dresden to Düsseldorf
Richter drew much support and inspiration from his mother, who encouraged him to become an artist during his mid-teens. Although his first application to attend the Dresden Art Academy in communist East Germany was rejected in 1950, one year later he was allowed to obtain a classical education there. Only a few months prior to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, he and his wife fled East Germany with only a suitcase, leaving behind his work. They settled in Düsseldorf, where, from 1961 to 1964, Richter studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Karl Otto Götz. Richter’s first solo exhibition was held at Möbelhaus Berges, a furniture store in Düsseldorf, in 1964. It was the first presentation of his photo-based painting style. International success
With paintings of regular images, Richter has tried to subvert the hierarchy of art and the everyday. “I believe in nothing,” he has said. Soon Richter’s work was exhibited in many German and international museums and galleries. His international success increased over the ensuing years, and, in 1973, his first exhibition in the United States took place. Fifteen years later, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago organized his first North American retrospective. In 2002, the Museum of Modern Art exhibited a retrospective of Richter’s paintings called “Forty Years of Painting.” The exhibition was critically acclaimed, becoming the biggest exhibition on a modern artist ever presented by MoMA. Gerhard Richter lives with his third wife in Cologne. February 9, 2007 Links
|
|
 Culture & Life   Life
Newsletters
 Printer-Friendly
Page
Email This Article |
||
|
|||||
|
|||||
