other artists

• Ana Mendieta
• Francis Bacon
• Hiroshi Sugimoto
• Alexander Calder
• Willem de Kooning
• Jean Dubuffet
• Alberto Giacometti
• Henri Matisse
• Henry Moore
• Auguste Rodin
• Ed Ruscha
• David Smith
• Ellsworth Kelly
• Nikki Lee
• Man Ray
• John Baldessari
• Arshile Gorky

in depth: Gerhard Richter

One of the most important artists to emerge from post–World War II Germany, Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden (then in East Germany) in 1932. He received a classical art education at the Dresden Academy before immigrating to the West German city of Düsseldorf in 1961. There he was influenced by the iconoclastic activities of Fluxus and American Pop Art.
 
With fellow students Sigmar Polke and Konrad Fischer-Lueg, Richter instigated the satirical Capitalist Realist style. Each artist created work based on reproductions from print media and other sources; Richter chose to make his images appear blurred.
 
From that time forward, Richter believed in the expressive potential of painting while simultaneously maintaining a subversive attitude toward its conventions and the viewer’s expectations of what those conventions are. Accordingly, he continued to experiment with imagery, creating stylistically varied paintings that range from super-realist landscapes to brilliantly colored abstract canvases. This combination of realism and abstraction form the basis of Richter’s strikingly diverse work, whether manifested in photography or paintings.