Daniel Richter

While German painting of the postwar period essentially concerned itself with coming to terms with the past and presenting it in gestures ranging from the heroic to the ironic, Daniel Richter focuses on positioning himself in the present. Time and again he devises new ways of being "modern" in a medium that has long been labeled old-fashioned and anachronistic. His pictures consistently challenge the spectator by their painterly and contextually excessive demands, but they do not lecture on moral issues. In five chapters featuring more than 200 examples of his works, the author Eva Meyer-Hermann traces the chronological development of Richter's artistic output for the first time. The turns from abstraction to figuration and back again that until now have been described as abrupt, prove on closer examination to be a logical consequence and a sign of conscious artistic action. DANIEL RICHTER (*1962), born in the city of Eutin in Schleswig-Holstein, has been one of the most significant and internationally renowned painters of his generation for more than twenty years. His beginnings in the autonomous left-wing underground and late studies with Werner Büttner at the Hochschule der bildenden Künste in Hamburg contributes to his reputation, as does his eloquent public presence.