Gerhard RICHTER

(1932)

Other possible identifications: after, manner

Biography

Born in 1932 in Dresden, Gerhard Richter moved to West Germany in 1961 where he started painting his first Photopaintings, works made from existing images (his own photos or press or amateur shots) which he transformed into pictorial objects.Resembling blurred photographs, these canvases were quickly noticed on the international scene.In 1972 he represented Germany at the 36 th Venice Biennale with 48 portraits based on photos of famous men.Like Andy Warhol, Richter “mechanized” his production, making canvases from “ready-made” images and using the “scraping” technique. In the 1980s, his first abstract works – invariably titled Asbtraktes bild – added a new dimension to the colorfields of American Abstract Expressionism (Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, etc.). In the early 2000s, his traveling exhibition Forty Years of Painting (curator: Robert Storr) was highly acclaimed at the MoMA. He subsequently became one of the most important painters of his generation and his prices rocketed. Between 2011 and 2018, 23 of his works fetched sums above the $20 million threshold. One of them, acquired in 1999 for $607,500 (Abstraktes bild, Sotheby’s, 18 May 1999) resold for $46.3 million at Sotheby’s in 2015.

Born in 1932 in Dresden, Gerhard Richter moved to West Germany in 1961 where he started painting his first Photopaintings, works made from existing images

(his own photos or press or amateur shots) which he transformed into pictorial objects.Resembling blurred photographs, these canvases were quickly noticed on the international scene.In 1972 he represented Germany at the 36 th Venice Biennale with 48 portraits based on photos of famous men.Like Andy Warhol, Richter “mechanized” his production, making canvases from “ready-made” images and using the “scraping” technique. In the 1980s, his first abstract works – invariably titled Asbtraktes bild – added a new dimension to the colorfields of American Abstract Expressionism (Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, etc.). In the early 2000s, his traveling exhibition Forty Years of Painting (curator: Robert Storr) was highly acclaimed at the MoMA. He subsequently became one of the most important painters of his generation and his prices rocketed. Between 2011 and 2018, 23 of his works fetched sums above the $20 million threshold. One of them, acquired in 1999 for $607,500 (Abstraktes bild, Sotheby’s, 18 May 1999) resold for $46.3 million at Sotheby’s in 2015.

Auction results

All auction results	6,973
Print-Multiple	3,546
Painting	2,118
Photography	985
Drawing-Watercolor	197
Sculpture-Volume	90
Tapestry	28
Objects	7
Furniture	2
Other categories...

31 results for other identifications

Artworks up for public auction

All artworks	10
Print-Multiple	9
Photography	1

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After Christie’s generated more than $1 billion last week from 20th and 21st century artworks (AMI link), Sotheby’s has hammered its third best-ever sales total at $408.5 million from an assortment of 19th and 20th century art in New York. The best results were generated by Picasso’s Femme nue couchée (nearly $67.5 million) and works […]

We are currently seeing strong demand for works by Germany’s major artists! For example, Günther Förg’s price index has risen by more than 600% in 20 years. Germany is one of the few countries where the art auction market remained almost unaffected by the covid pandemic. Bucking the trend of other Western marketplaces, its overall […]

Matisse and Picasso, Haring and Basquiat, Warhol, Richter and Banksy… the year’s top-selling prints have shown a distinct preference for Modern & Contemporary works over ‘historical’ works. Indeed, the appeal of the new is perfectly illustrated by the fact that the year’s highest price in this medium so far is for a work by Banksy, […]

As the Hong Kong art market develops at a phenomenal pace, London is relatively less attractive than it was ten years ago. Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips are now selling certain Western masterpieces – for example, by Basquiat, Still, Richter and Ghenie – in Asia rather than in London, reflecting a general shift of the global […]

In the first semester of 2021 the art auction market managed to recover all of its dynamism. If all goes well, the art fairs which will resume in September. They will, however, have to contend with a substantially modified market characterised by the sensational arrival of NFTs and sky-high prices for works by very young […]