Gerhard Richter, Dresden / Alemanha - pintura pós-moderna contemporânea

Abstract Painting series «Meditation» 1986, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1994, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Bach» 1992, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1990, oil on canvas

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Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1995, oil on canvas

Alpine series «Himalaya» 1968, oil on canvas
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Abstract Painting series «Dorf» 1988, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1988, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1979, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1984, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1991, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Atem» 1989, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1986, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Trumpet» 1984, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Kind» 1989, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1988, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Inpainting (Grey)» 1972, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1987, oil on canvas

Nudes series «Ema» 1966, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Vesuvius» 1976, oil on wood

Candles series «Untitled» 1989, oil on canvas

Landscapes series «Venice» (Island) 1986, oil on canvas

Mother and Child series «S. with Child» 1995, oil on canvas

Abstract Painting series «Untitled» 1977, oil on canvas

Children series « Betty» 1988, oil on canvas

Landscapes series «Small Canary Island» 1970, oil on canvas

Landscapes series «Scheune Barn» 1984, oil on canvas

Animals series «Deer II» 1966, oil on canvas

Seascape series «Cloudy» 1969, oil on canvas

Apples series «Bottle with Apple» 1988, oil on canvas

Portraits and People series «Court Chapel, Dresden» 2000, oil on canvas

Seascape series «Untitled» 1998, oil on canvas

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Pintor nascido em Dresden, Alemanha de Leste. Estudou na Kunstakademie Dresden entre 1951-56, onde se fazia a apologia de um realismo socialista, dominante nos países de ideologia comunista, como era o caso da então RDA. Em 1961, mudou-se para Düsseldorf, cidade que descobria as novas atitudes anti-arte do movimento Fluxus e estudou na Kunstakademie Düsseldorf entre 1961-63. 1964 marca o início de um percurso que se caracteriza por um constante desafio à classificação da sua pintura, demonstrativa de uma prolixidade estilística perfeitamente invulgar. As primeiras obras baseavam-se em fotografias (de origem jornalística ou privada), transpostas para a tela com um realismo pictórico minucioso. Posteriormente irá divagar criativamente por diferentes tipos de abstracção, de carácter geométrico ou gestual, ao mesmo tempo que continua a realizar pinturas inequivocamente figurativas. A dicotomia figuração/abstracção, fundamental para grande parte do discurso teórico da modernidade, é, assim, negada na sua essência, uma vez que este artista parece querer demonstrar a equivalência da validade estética destas duas formas de encarar a pintura. A sua busca parece, nas suas palavras, visar apenas a satisfação de uma necessidade inexplicável:"... abstenho-me de nomear aquilo que a pintura nos dá. Só sei que ela é útil e importante, como a música e a arte em geral. A pintura é, consequentemente, qualquer coisa de absolutamente necessário para sobreviver". Entre as suas retrospectivas contam-se, Tate Gallery, Londres, 1991-92, e Kunst und Austellungshalle des Bundersrepublik Deutschland, Bona, em 1993-94.

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The Berardo Collection, Museu Berardo Lisboa
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Crítica:

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Richter's early paintings gave Pop Art a political edge. His subject matter was often based on news print photographs mimicking the blurring of surveillance images taken from a moving car. Richter's origins in Eastern Germany gave this quality a more personal resonance. His painting's relationship to photography has remained constant even though his subject matter has varied from landscape, to historical paintings, to apparently minimalist abstraction. It is not the accuracy of the image that interests him but on the contrary the potential for blurring, loss of focus and definition that it produces.

In his installation 'Atlas' at DIA in New York and later at Documenta 1997 Richter displayed a vast array of small photos taken as if for a sketchbook. These included hundreds of images of textures, clouds, seas, tiles, brickwork, trees, and so on. These were sometimes painted over, sometimes re-photographed so that the layering of photograph and paint became inextricably conflated. The textures and colours of the worked photos bore a striking resemblance to the repertoire of marks and colours of Richter's abstract paintings.

This repertoire is translated into a painterly tradition that is connected to Titian and Velasquez and so through Monet to Rothko. This tradition is partially expressed in the Baroque tendency to break the surface of the paint and blur the image to stimulate imaginative interpretation by the viewer. In spite of his relation to tradition, Richter has one strong affiliation with Minimalism. He emphasises process and paint as stuff rather than as a medium for pictorial composition. This is particularly evident in the abstractions where the paint is dragged onto the canvas with a squeegee. In 'Abstract painting (812)' he has used only one colour in the over painting, it has been dragged across the stretched canvas on which an earlier darker composition had been laid down. In the process he emphasises the underlying materiality of painting by revealing the horizontal stretcher bars. The rich yellow of this top coat produces a summery, buttery, glow. This glow is accentuated by glimpses of the underpainting that hint at deep space beyond the surface and as electric flashes against the yellow.
Art Gallery of New South Wales

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Gerhard Richter is one of the foremost painters in postwar European art. Alternating between figurative and abstract approaches, his work intentionally defies stylistic categorization. He was first recognized in the early 1960s as co-founder, with Sigmar Polke and others, of Capitalist Realism, a group dedicated to the objective depiction of society in an increasingly commodity-oriented Germany. Photography was central to Richter's pictorial documentation and his rejection of the Expressionist painting popular at the time. In 1962 he began making paintings directly after photographs, family snapshots, or newspaper illustrations, aligning himself with a European manifestation of Pop art. But by constantly questioning modes of perception and artistic representation, he has given his work an element of Conceptual art as well.

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Richter began making prints in 1965 and has completed more than one hundred to date; he was most active before 1974, completing projects only sporadically since that time. He has explored a variety of photographic printmaking processes—screenprint, photolithography, and collotype—in search of inexpensive mediums that would lend a "non-art" appearance to his work. Although interested in the wide dissemination of imagery that printmaking offers, he has avoided the collaborative workshop prerequisites of the more traditional techniques.

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Portraiture has been an important genre for Richter, with Mao and Elisabeth II among the most haunting examples from this period. The ghostlike heads bleed off the sheets, fusing an aura of power and inaccessibility with a posterlike immediacy.

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Wendy Weitman,

MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NY

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Gerhard Richter's website