Kapitalistisch Realisme. Richter, Lueg & Polke

Gerhard Richter has been widely regarded as a publicity shy artist. However, the biography Gerhard Richter. A Life in Painting gives an insight into Richter’s personal history as well as into the development of his artistic œuvre.
Besides an evaluation of numerous letters and material from the Gerhard Richter archive, the book includes conversations with the artist as well as several of his contemporaries. Dietmar Elger, director of the Gerhard Richter Archive, describes Richter’s daily studio routine and his creative process. Thanks to detailed background information, this book contributes to an understanding of Richter’s art in connection with his life.

This English translation of the biography Gerhard Richter, Maler by Dietmar Elger, published in 2009, was slightly revised for the Anglophone reader.

This catalogue raisonné records Richter’s works in the years 1993-2004.

In his work, Gerhard Richter calls into question painting's boundaries, and the labels applied to painting and theories connected with them. In his pictures based on photographs - blurred overpaintings, grey paintings, and landscape and abstract compositions - he makes clear that nothing perceived by our senses can ever be found in a picture. The outer world is not portrayable and the inner one resists any comparison. While his painted works based on photographs illustrate painting's superiority, his glass works - glass panes, paintings on glass, mirrors and sculptures - question the interaction of viewer and picture and, like the paintings, offer a window onto the world. This publication takes account of all the important stages of Richter's oeuvre.