Gerhard Richter

Painting is another form of thinking.

— Gerhard Richter

I am ridiculously old-fashioned.

— Gerhard Richter

All photographs are far more important than any painting.

— Gerhard Richter

My paintings are wiser than I am.

— Gerhard Richter

Chance determines our lives in important ways.

— Gerhard Richter

Art is the highest form of hope.

— Gerhard Richter

To make a photograph is already the first artificial act.

— Gerhard Richter

I can't paint as well as Vermeer.

— Gerhard Richter

Art shows us how to see things that are constructive and good, and to be an active part of that.

— Gerhard Richter

Art is the ideal medium for making contact with the transcendental, or at least for getting close to it.

— Gerhard Richter

How could one be in this world without feeling dismayed by it? Even if one paints flowers and gingerbread.

— Gerhard Richter

I'm trying to paint a picture of what I have seen and what moved me, as well as I can. That's all.

— Gerhard Richter

I believe that he knew more what he was doing. I might be absolutely wrong about this, but that was my impression.

— Gerhard Richter

I never worked at painting as if it were a job; it was always out of interest or for fun, a desire…

— Gerhard Richter

Art should be serious, not a joke. I dont like to laugh about art.

— Gerhard Richter

Well, I don't believe there are subjects that can't be painted, but there are a lot of things that I personally can't…

— Gerhard Richter

Abstract pictures are fictive models, because they make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we…

— Gerhard Richter

I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating…

— Gerhard Richter

It's that same quality I've been talking about. It's neither contrived, nor surprising and smart, not baffling, not witty, not interesting, not…

— Gerhard Richter

Since there is no such thing as absolute rightness and truth, we always pursue the artificial, leading, human truth. We judge and…

— Gerhard Richter

I choose depending on the way I feel; randomly, in other words. When I haven't done anything for a long time, I…

— Gerhard Richter

Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures.…

— Gerhard Richter

I wanted to make it as anonymous as a photo. But it was perhaps also the wish for perfection, the unapproachable, which…

— Gerhard Richter

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

But it is also untrue that I have nothing specific in mind. As with my landscapes: I see countless landscapes, photograph barely…

— Gerhard Richter

My method is related to an attempt to do something that might be understood by today's world, or that could at least…

— Gerhard Richter

I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes or variations that lead to mastery... I like the indefinite, the boundless; I…

— Gerhard Richter

The paint for the grey paintings was mixed beforehand and then applied with different implements - sometimes a roller, sometimes a brush.…

— Gerhard Richter

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

I do not mistrust reality, of which I know next to nothing, but I am suspicious regarding the image of reality which…

— Gerhard Richter

But I would like to reach the point where I could cut up an illustrated magazine at random and see to it…

— Gerhard Richter

Painting is traditional but for me that doesn't mean the academy. I felt a need to paint; I love painting. It was…

— 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

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

— 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

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

— Gerhard Richter

Art is always to a large extent about need, despair and hopelessness.

— Gerhard Richter

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

— 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

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

— Gerhard Richter