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Gerhard Richter

GermanGerman
, b. 1932

Gerhard Richter is best known for his innovative incorporations of photography and painting that uniquely reconcile representation and abstraction. Born in Germany during the rise of the Nazi regime, Richter avoided ideological artistic expressions. After fleeing to West Germany in 1961, he started producing blurred yet realistic paintings taken from photographs and opened his practice to a variety of media. In the following decades, Richter experimented with abstraction, employing original tools and producing large, monochromatic canvases which question the limits of representation. He continues to push the boundaries of painting, blurring the lines between materiality and illusionistic space. Gerhard Richter’s artistic explorations, which stretch over more than six decades, constitute a radical attempt to integrate representation and abstraction. Known for his painted copies of black and white photographs rendered with a blurred effect, Richter has broadened the potentials of both photography and painting.