TLDR Gerhard Richter | Betty

Gerhard Richter, born in Dresden, Germany, in 1932, is a towering figure in contemporary art, whose life and work were forged by the tumultuous history of 20th-century Germany. Growing up under the Nazi regime and later living in Communist East Germany, Richter's early artistic education was in the state-sanctioned style of socialist realism. In 1961, he escaped to West Germany, where his career began to flourish. Rejecting adherence to a single style, Richter has spent decades exploring the possibilities of painting. His vast and varied body of work includes blurred photorealistic paintings based on found and personal photographs, monumental abstract pieces created with a giant squeegee, somber historical paintings, and modern stained glass designs.

Richter's artistic practice is marked by a systematic and conceptual approach. He meticulously numbers each of his works in a catalogue raisonné, emphasizing their place in an ongoing investigation of how images are made and understood. His iconic abstract paintings are often created by dragging a large squeegee across layers of wet paint, a technique that introduces an element of chance and removes the traditional artist's hand. Richter's work frequently delves into the complex nature of memory and history, using his own family photographs—including a haunting image of his "Uncle Rudi" in a Nazi uniform—as source material. This tension between the personal and the historical, the abstract and the figurative, is powerfully captured in major works like his enigmatic 1988 portrait of his daughter, "Betty," and his celebrated stained-glass window for the Cologne Cathedral.

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