Gerhard Richter

To make a photograph is already the first artificial act.

— Gerhard Richter

Art is the highest form of hope.

— Gerhard Richter

I can't paint as well as Vermeer.

— Gerhard Richter

My paintings are wiser than I am.

— Gerhard Richter

I am ridiculously old-fashioned.

— Gerhard Richter

All photographs are far more important than any painting.

— Gerhard Richter

Painting is another form of thinking.

— Gerhard Richter

Chance determines our lives in important ways.

— Gerhard Richter

Now that we do not have priests and philosophers any more, artists are the most important people in the world.

— Gerhard Richter

I pursue no intentions, no directions; I have no program, no style and no mission.

— Gerhard Richter

I have painted my family so frequently because they are the one who really affect me the most.

— Gerhard Richter

Good art in general aspires to something, as a good painting aspires to something, almost spiritual or holy.

— Gerhard Richter

I don't believe in the reality of painting, so I use different styles like clothes: it's a way to disguise myself.

— Gerhard Richter

I believe that art has a kind of rightness, as in music, when we hear whether or not a note is false

— Gerhard Richter

It's our culture, Christian history, that's what formed me. Even as an atheist, I believe. We're just built that way.

— Gerhard Richter

Gray is the color... the most important of all... absent of opinion, nothing, neither/nor.

— Gerhard Richter

I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that…

— Gerhard Richter

Painting is consequently an almost blind, desperate effort, like that of a person abandoned, helpless, in totally incomprehensible surroundings.

— Gerhard Richter

Everything has a reason, including the selection of the photos, which was not arbitrary but appropriate to the period, its highs and…

— Gerhard Richter

I don't dare to think my paintings are great. I can't understand the arrogance of someone saying, 'I have created a big,…

— Gerhard Richter

Politicians are nauseating by definition... They can produce nothing, neither a loaf of bread nor a table nor a picture; and this…

— Gerhard Richter

In 1981, I think, for the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf. Before that I designed a mirror room for Kasper König's Westkunst show, but…

— Gerhard Richter

I find the Romantic period extraordinarily interesting. My landscapes have connections with Romanticism: at times I feel a real desire for, an…

— Gerhard Richter

The year is always correct, also the month, only the day can be another. But that occurs to me only in the…

— Gerhard Richter

I first came up with the idea for the colour-chart pictures back in 1966, and my preoccupation with the topic culminated in…

— Gerhard Richter

I wanted to say something different: the pictures are also a leave-taking, in several respects. Factually: these specific persons are dead; as…

— Gerhard Richter

The truth... When they have a similar structure to and are organized in as truthful a way as nature. When I look…

— Gerhard Richter

The urge to break with a tradition is only appropriate when you're dealing with an outdated, troublesome tradition: I never really thought…

— Gerhard Richter

I believe I am looking for rightness. My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a…

— Gerhard Richter

The political topicality of my October paintings means almost nothing to me, but in many reviews it is the first or only…

— Gerhard Richter

Contact with like-minded painters - a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our…

— Gerhard Richter

I started doing 'figures', then, one day, all of a sudden, I started doing abstraction. And then I started doing both. But…

— Gerhard Richter

But I have a problem with the term 'light'. I never in my life knew what to do with that. I know…

— Gerhard Richter

Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and…

— Gerhard Richter

Of course I constantly despair at my own incapacity, at the impossibility of ever accomplishing anything, of painting a valid, true picture…

— Gerhard Richter

A work of art is itself an object, first of all, and so manipulation is unavoidable: it's a prerequisite. But I needed…

— Gerhard Richter

If the abstract paintings show my reality, then the landscapes and still-lifes show my yearning.

— Gerhard Richter

I want pictorial content without sentiment, but I want it as human as possible

— Gerhard Richter

My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation.

— Gerhard Richter

I don't create blurs. Blurring is not the most important thing; nor is it an identity tag for my pictures.

— Gerhard Richter