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![\"Gerhard](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/richter_gerhard___seestueck_bewoelkt___1969___werkverzeichnis_239-1___neues_museum_nuernberg___foto_werner_gensmantel-600x600.jpg\")
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Photo by Werner Gensmantel via nmn.de<\/sup><\/p>\n For his landscape paintings, Gerhard Richter drew inspiration from Romanticism. He was very fond of German painter Caspar David Friedrich, an influence that is particularly palpable in his seascapes. Like most of his landscapes, “Seascape (Cloudy)” is based on several photographs collaged together into one single image.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n Photo via\u00a0oceanandmartin.com<\/sup><\/p>\n Gerhard Richter\u2019s first colour paintings, created in the mid ’60s, were related to Pop Art and directly based on commercial colour charts. He later began to approach the selection of colours in a rather systematic way, and eventually created \u201c1024 Colours\u201d based on a coincidental and highly complex colour grading system. In 2006, he explained: \u201cThis way, I could avoid creating a colour scheme, or any result that might be representational, and only had to determine the format of the painting, the proportions of the grid and the quality of the material. The paintings created in this manner tend towards total perfection and convey the idea of a practically endless number of possible pictures.”<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n You might recognise this work from the cover of Sonic Youth\u2019s album \u201cDaydream Nation\u201d. For photorealist paintings like this one, Richter blurred his motives using brushes, squeegees or his hands. In his notes, he wrote: \u201cI blur things so that they do not look artistic or craftsmanlike but technological, smooth and perfect. I blur things to make all the parts a closer fit.”<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n Photo via\u00a0sothebys.com<\/sup><\/p>\n In the late ’70s, Gerhard Richter started to create abstract paintings, which he described as \u201cfictive models, because they make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we can postulate.” “Abstract Painting 599”, which is one of Richter\u2019s personal favourites, sold for over 46 million dollars to an anonymous buyer in 2015, making it his most expensive painting yet.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n Photo via\u00a0sothebys.com<\/sup><\/p>\n In \u201cVenice\u201d, Gerhard Richter merges his two most prolific painting styles by adding expressionist brushstrokes to a blurred photorealist painting, proving once again that he is, as the New York Times once put it, an \u201cartist beyond -isms\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n Photo via\u00a0studyblue.com<\/sup><\/p>\n In his Baader Meinhof series, Richter dealt with the German left-wing terrorist group RAF that carried out numerous bank robberies, kidnappings and bombings during the ’70s. The series includes paintings of the group\u2019s initiators after they committed suicide in their prison cells as well as other press photos related to their deaths. In an interview from 1989, he commented on the grief-evoking atmosphere of the paintings that caused outrage from many German news outlets, saying: \u201cThere is sorrow, but I hope one can see that it is sorrow for the people who died so young and so crazy, for nothing.”<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n Photo via\u00a0nrpberlin.de<\/sup><\/p>\n This painting of Richter\u2019s daughter turning away from the viewer recently made news when the German minister of interior affairs Thomas de Maizi\u00e8re pulled out a copy of it during a speech. He used it in order to illustrate Germany\u2019s \u201cobsessive preoccupation with its past\u201d and the country\u2019s inability to find its own identity within the present.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n Photo via\u00a0Pinterest<\/sup><\/p>\n The colours in this Abstract Painting are exceptionally bold and beautiful, and the gradient in its vertical lines almost makes it seem iridescent. Richter stated in an interview that his abstract paintings often turned out completely different to what he’d planned, and that he frequently altered them.“SEASCAPE (CLOUDY)”, 1969 <\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Gerhard](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/PUoB6Hr-900x479.jpg\")
<\/span><\/h2>\n“1024 COLOURS”, 1973<\/h2>\n
![\"Kerze](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Kerze-Candle-38-1.jpg\")
\nPhoto via my9arts.es<\/sup><\/p>\n“CANDLE”, 1982<\/h2>\n
![\"abstract\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/abstract-1-497x600.jpg\")
<\/span><\/h2>\n“ABSTRACT PAINTING 599”, 1986<\/h2>\n
![\"Venedig\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Venedig-635x600.jpg\")
<\/span><\/h2>\n“VENICE”, 1986<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Erschossener](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Erschossener-I-845x600.png\")
<\/span><\/h2>\n“MAN SHOT DOWN I”, 1988<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Gerhard](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/148454572-450x600.jpg\")
<\/h2>\n“BETTY”, 1988<\/h2>\n
![\"Gerhard](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/ABSTRACT-780-1-443x600.jpg\")
<\/span><\/h2>\n“ABSTRACT PAINTING 780-1”, 1992<\/span><\/h2>\n
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