untitled, 1994

Painting in oil on paper

Dimensions: 20 x 29.50 cm

Gerhard Richter grew up in the former GDR, initially working as a master student at the academy and taking on state commissions from the GDR. In 1961 Gerhard Richter and his wife fled to West Germany. Richter's work, ranging from photorealistic depictions of nature, blurred paintings based on photographs, paintings of the highest abstraction to glass and mirror objects or installations, appears full of contradictions. What holds his work together is the exploratory and experimental engagement with reality. This multifaceted questioning of the media of modern art about reality is seen as the real core of the oeuvre.

Gerhard Richter's international artistic recognition led to a comprehensive retrospective as early as 1993/1994, with stops in Paris, Bonn, Stockholm and Madrid. In 2002, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, followed with the largest exhibition ever dedicated to a living artist, with 188 exhibits. In the "World Ranking List of Living Artists", Gerhard Richter occupied first place from 2004 to 2008 and from 2010 to 2015; according to Artnet, he is one of the most expensive living contemporary artists. His market volume in auctions of past years was around 558 million euros. Manager Magazin has put him on its list of the most important artists since 2010; he is considered one of the 500 richest Germans.