I have no motif, only motivation. I believe that motivation is the real thing, the natural thing, and that the motif is… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Not the victims of any specific ideology of the left or of the right, but of the ideological posture as such. This… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I do see myself as the heir to a vast, great, rich culture of painting - of art in general - which… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The photograph is the only picture that can truly convey information, even if it is technically faulty and the object can barely… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Cage is much more disciplined. He made chance a method and used it in constructive ways; I never did that. Everything here… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Painting pictures is simply the official, the daily work, the profession, and in the case of the watercolours I can sooner afford… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Experience has proved that there is no difference between a so-called realist painting - of a landscape, for example - and an… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The political topicality of my October paintings means almost nothing to me, but in many reviews it is the first or only… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Contact with like-minded painters - a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I started doing 'figures', then, one day, all of a sudden, I started doing abstraction. And then I started doing both. But… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
My pictures are devoid of objects; like objects, they are themselves objects. This means that they are devoid of content, significance or… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I think everybody starts out by seeing a few works of art and wanting to do something like them. You want to… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I believe I am looking for rightness. My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I don't know what motivated the artist, which means that the paintings have an intrinsic quality. I think Goethe called it the… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
People won't stop painting, just as they won't stop making music or dancing. This is a facility we have. Children don't stop… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Talk about painting: there's no point. By conveying a thing through the medium of language, you change it. You construct qualities that… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Family photos, pictures of groups, those are truely wonderful. And they are just as good as the old masters, just as rich… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Illusion - or rather appearance, semblance - is the theme of my life (could be theme of speech welcoming freshmen to the… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I don't how I can describe the quality that is only found in art (be it music, literature, painting, or whatever), this… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I believe in painting and I believe in eating too. What can we do? We have to eat, we have to paint,… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
When I paint from a photograph, conscious thinking is eliminated. I don't know what I am doing. My work is far closer… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
In truth, factual information - names or dates - have never interested me much. Those things are like an alien language that… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The smudging makes the paintings a bit more complete. When they're not blurred, so many details seem wrong, and the whole thing… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The truth... When they have a similar structure to and are organized in as truthful a way as nature. When I look… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Nature/Structure. There is no more to say. In my pictures I reduce to that. But 'reduce' is the wrong word, because these… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Architecture was, or is, a kind of hobby, an inclination I have to fiddling around and building things. Putting up shelves or… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Turning to the colour-classification methodology: The starting point are the four pure colours red, yellow, green and blue; their in-between shades and… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Painting is my profession, because it has always been the thing that interested me most. I'm of a certain age, I come… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Only about one per cent of my paintings show family members. Do they help me deal with problems? It's likely that these… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The grey is certainly inspired by the photo-paintings, and, of course, it's related to the fact that I think grey is an… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Unlike the photography and prints, I never catalogued, kept track of or exhibited the sketches. I sold some occasionally, but never saw… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Well, the beginning is actually quite easy, because I can still be quite free about the way I handle things - colours,… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The first colour charts were unsystematic. They were based directly on commercial colour samples. They were still related to Pop Art. In… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Art shows us how to see things that are constructive and good, and to be an active part of that. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
They are specific places I have discovered here and there when I am on the road to take photos. I go especially to take… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
To me, grey is the welcome and only possible equivalent for indifference, noncommitment, absence of opinion, absence of shape. But grey, like formlessness and… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Now that we do not have priests and philosophers any more, artists are the most important people in the world. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Yes, we were amazed when that happened. It was a real joke to us. Konrad Lueg and I did a Happening, and we used… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
A work of art is itself an object, first of all, and so manipulation is unavoidable: it's a prerequisite. But I needed the greater… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
The photograph is the only picture that can truly convey information, even if it is technically faulty and the object can barely be identified.… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Perhaps the choice is a negative one, in that I was trying to avoid everything that touched on well-known issues - or any issues… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
Gray is the color... the most important of all... absent of opinion, nothing, neither/nor. — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
You can compare it to dreams: you have a very specific and individual pictorial language that you either accept or that you can translate… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
What attracted me about my mirrors was the idea of having nothing manipulated in them. A piece of bought mirror. Just hung there, without… — Gerhard Richter Copy Share Image
