Gerhard Richter (German, 1932- )

Gerhard Richter, a conceptual artist and painter, defiantly moves between abstraction and figuration and uses a wide variety of methods to apply paint to canvas. Like Polke, he draws upon mass-media sources and vernacular photographs. In the early 1960s, Richter utilized amateur photographs, advertisements, and book and magazine illustrations for his "photographic realism." From 1968 to the present, he has used his own photographs for his vernacular landscapes. Among his most well-known works is a series of photo-paintings of terrorists massacred in Italy. He has also compiled a collection of photographic typologies, recently published as Atlas.
- Patricia Schaefer

Selected Bibliography
Dietrich, Dorothea. "Gerhard Richter: An Interview." The Print Collector's Newsletter. (Sept/Oct 1985): 128-132.

Richter, Gerhard. Gerhard Richter. Texts by Neal Ascherson, Stefan Germer, and Sean Rainbird. London: Tate Gallery, 1991.

Richter, Gerhard. Gerhard Richter. 3 vols. With texts by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Peter Gidal, and Birgit Pelzer. Bonn: Kunst-und Austellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1993.

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