The artistic production of Gerhard Richter falls into three broad categories:
figurative, that is, all the paintings based on photography or nature; constructive,
more theoretical work such as color charts, greys, glass panes, and mirrors;
and abstract, most of the work since 1976 except for still-lifes and landscapes.
The variety in his work does not indicate a lack of interest in reality
but rather a greater confidence in accurately presenting different models
to convey it. In fact, starting with the first picture in his catalogue
raisonné, Richter has been comfortable combining both figuration
and abstraction in many of his pictures. |
Richter's main sources for his figurative work of the 1960s were ordinary
black-and-white family snapshots or pictures appropriated from the media.
The banality of these images and their muted color range helped Richter
to maintain an attitude of expressive neutrality.
The abstracts, which Richter has concentrated on throughout the 1980s and
1990s, usually begin with a soft ground of primary colors arranged in a
variety of geometric patterns. Richter then applies an overlay of paint,
which is brushed, dragged, squeegeed, or streaked in aggressive colors.
This process of simultaneous creation and destruction, often repeated several
times, makes it difficult to determine the figure-ground relationship. Richter's
abstracts, clearly his most spontaneous, visually complex, and emotionally
evocative work, perpetuate the tradition of Modernist painting.
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