About Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter, born in Dresden in 1932, is considered one of the most important contemporary artists—and a master of stylistic diversity. Since the 1960s, he has been constantly renewing his work: from photorealistic paintings to… Read more

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Limited, numbered edition with certificate of authenticity.

Gerhard Richter, born in Dresden in 1932, is considered one of the most important contemporary artists—and a master of stylistic diversity. Since the 1960s, he has been constantly renewing his work: from photorealistic paintings to blurred images to large-format squeegee abstractions. Where others pursue a single artistic line, Richter makes diversity itself a principle.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Gerhard Richter, born in Dresden in 1932, is considered one of the most important contemporary artists—and a master of stylistic diversity. Since the 1960s, he has been constantly renewing his work: from photorealistic paintings to blurred images to large-format squeegee abstractions. Where others pursue a single artistic line, Richter makes diversity itself a principle.

One central theme runs like a thread through his oeuvre—spanning more than six decades: the relationship between photography and painting. Richter repeatedly explores the boundary between documentary representation and painterly transformation. By translating photographic material into painting, he blurs the certainties of both media—reality appears in lyrical blurring, abstraction gains representational presence. This productive ambivalence has become the characteristic feature of his work.

Three works exemplify the breadth of his oeuvre: Juno (1983), now on display at the National Gallery of Australia, is considered a key work of his abstraction, in which the layering and powerful colors of his squeegee technique come to the fore. Abstraktes Bild (1984) achieved an extraordinary auction price at Sotheby's in 1996 – an early indication of Richter's unbroken appeal on the international art market. Küchenstuhl (1965), on the other hand, demonstrates how Richter transforms everyday objects into timeless art, placing them in the field of tension between photography and painting.

Richter's works have long since become cultural reference points – present in major museum collections, celebrated in exhibitions worldwide, and firmly anchored in the discourse of art history. His ability to transform opposites into productive tension lends his work an intellectual depth that is always accompanied by sensual immediacy.

LUMAS is now releasing selected works as limited editions on the finest handmade paper. This is a rare opportunity to add an authentic piece of art history to your own collection and experience the fascination of a century-spanning artist firsthand.

The continuous development that has shaped Gerhard Richter’s work for decades continues in a concentrated form in the newly included works of the Selection. Once again, the focus lies on the relationship between photographic source and painterly transformation – this time in motifs that inherently resist fixed interpretation.

With Landscape with Cloud and Birds, two early painterly positions are made accessible for the first time as editions – offering insight into the artist’s quiet, reduced visual worlds. In both motifs, air becomes the unifying element, creating a space for the ephemeral, the barely tangible, for meaning suspended in flux. This principle is reinforced by a restrained palette that opens the viewer’s gaze to what lies beyond immediate perception.

The cloud and the flock of birds do not merely appear as components of a scene, but as independent pictorial events: poised between documentary precision and painterly dissolution, between presence and movement, sublimity and lightness.

In this way, the new works expand the Selection not through rupture, but through refinement. They continue Richter’s central question: What does an image show – and what eludes it?

VITA

Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932 and lives in Cologne. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and later at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where he also taught as a professor from 1971 onwards. Richter is considered one of the most important contemporary artists and is known for his versatile work, which ranges from photorealism to abstraction. His works are shown worldwide in major museums and at important exhibitions such as documenta and the Venice Biennale, and can be found in numerous renowned collections.

Exhibitions

2020 – Gerhard Richter: Painting After All, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

2014 – Fondation Beyeler, Riehen

2011-12 – Panorama, Tate Modern, London; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berli

1997 – Venice Biennale, Venice

1980 – Deutscher Pavillion, Venice Biennale, Venice

1972 – Documenta 5, Kassel