When Gerhard Richter fled from East Germany in 1961 together with his first wife Marianne Eufinger, called Ema, he initially considered settling in Munich. However, the Düsseldorf sculptor Reinhard Graner made the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia and especially its academy appealing to him as a hotspot of contemporary art. And indeed, he convinces Richter: The then 29-year-old, who had studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1951 to 1957 and had already achieved some successes in the East German art scene, decides on Düsseldorf. There, he continues his studies until 1964. In October there, he stages the happening "Living with Pop – A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism" together with his fellow student Konrad Fischer, then Konrad Lueg, in a furniture store. And there he teaches as a professor of painting from 1971 to 1993.
On February 9, 2022, Gerhard Richter celebrated his 90th birthday. Düsseldorf and Cologne, where he has lived since 1983, celebrated him with their own exhibitions. In addition, there were presentations for the anniversary at the Albertinum of the State Art Collections Dresden, which has been home to the Gerhard Richter Archive since 2006, and at the New National Gallery in Berlin. The National Gallery, which already owns numerous works by the master, can feel flattered: For the Museum of the 20th Century, which is to be built by 2026 at the Kulturforum based on a design by Herzog & de Meuron, the Gerhard Richter Kunststiftung - established in 2021 by the artist and his third wife Sabine Moritz - has additionally made 100 works available as long-term loans.
With the category "superstar", into which Gerhard Richter undoubtedly belongs, it's a complicated matter: why has Gerhard Richter been regarded as the most important German artist for decades? What makes his art so unique? It is not easy to find an answer beyond common, yet superficial criteria like exhibition frequency or market value. Especially since Richter's work seems to sabotage the notion of 'uniqueness' through continuous metamorphoses. His oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, watercolors, and objects. Photorealistic and abstract works are equally accomplished in his hands. Sometimes he blurs all concrete traces in his images, at other times he plows the paint with a squeegee, and at times he creates structures with the precision of a scalpel. Landscapes, still lifes, and portraits are part of his thematic spectrum, as are examples of contemporary history painting. Not to forget editions, artist books, art in architecture, or stained glass windows. Finally, there is an archive maintained in a remarkably bureaucratic manner, in which the genesis of each work is meticulously documented – the so-called "Atlas", consisting of photographs, newspaper clippings, and sketches.
Returning to the question posed at the beginning, one might justify Gerhard Richter's extraordinary status by noting that he reinvents himself like hardly anyone else. He is a chameleon, as the art criticism likes to call him. An endlessly searching individual who remains true to a certain extent by expanding the expressive possibilities of art with every facet of his work. Klaus Honnef, who organized Richter's first institutional solo exhibition in Aachen in 1969, speaks of "break of style as a stylistic principle". This sounds paradoxical, and it probably is, but it embodies an attitude that Richter formulated back in 1966: "I pursue no intentions, no system, no direction, I have no program, no style, no concern. … I flee every definition, I do not know what I want, I am inconsistent, indifferent, passive."
If there is such a thing as brilliant inconsistency, then Gerhard Richter is a prime candidate for this category. Nevertheless, his work is grounded by a guiding motif. The aspect intended is the "Memento mori." "Remember that you will die," the admonition dating back to ancient Rome seems to echo through numerous images of Richter. This begins with the works "Shooting" (1962), "Coffin Bearers" (1962), or "Aunt Marianne" (1965), continues in the almost reverent series of the "Candle Pictures" (1982/83), and finds its culmination in 1988 in the cycle "October 18, 1977," which is now located in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The 15 panels, with which Richter connects to the technique of his gray photo images from the 1960s, evoke the so-called "German Autumn," particularly the terrorist attacks of the Red Army Faction and the suicides of the imprisoned RAF leaders in Stammheim. Everything too tangible is obscured in these paintings created after photographs. Yet behind this veil, the existential dimension of existence reveals itself more profoundly than even the most drastic images of death could achieve.
