° 1932

Born in Dresden (), lives in Cologne ().

[Gerhard Richter](http://www.gerhard-richter.com/) (1932, Germany, lives in Cologne) was educated in East Germany as a mural painter in the style of Socialist Realism. He left in 1961 and organised actions in Düsseldorf, together with Sigmar Polke, under the provocative title Capitalist Realism. Influenced by the banality of Pop Art, Richter based his paintings on photographs and blurred the still wet image to create out-of-focus effects. Later Richter would make photo-realist and abstract paintings in parallel. The content of the work may be political, as in his famous series on the German RAF terrorists, but it always also contains other, existential, dimensions.