Quote

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 paint.

Gerhard Richter

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gerhard Richter
Age: 92
Born: 1932
Born: February 9
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
University Teacher
Visual Artist
Elbflorenz
Gehede Lixite
Geruharuto Rihitā
Gerd Richter
Subjects
Painting
Art
Wells
Well
Believe
Painted
Things
Personally
Paint

More quotes by Gerhard Richter

Image
Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless.
Gerhard Richter
Image
To believe, one must have lost God. To paint, one must have lost art.
Gerhard Richter
Image
My paintings are wiser than I am.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I go to the studio every day, but I dont paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things.
Gerhard Richter
Image
Cage is much more disciplined. He made chance a method and used it in constructive ways I never did that. Everything here is a little more chaotic.
Gerhard Richter
Image
Art is the ideal medium for making contact with the transcendental, or at least for getting close to it.
Gerhard Richter
Image
The reason these paintings are destined for New York is not because I am disappointed about a lack of German interest, but because MoMA asked me, and because I consider it to be the best museum in the world.
Gerhard Richter
Image
Above all, it's never blind chance: it's a chance that is always planned, but also always surprising. And I need it in order to carry on, in order to eradicate my mistakes, to destroy what I've worked out wrong, to introduce something different and disruptive. I'm often astonished to find how much better chance is than I am.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I find the Romantic period extraordinarily interesting. My landscapes have connections with Romanticism: at times I feel a real desire for, an attraction to, this period, and some of my pictures are a homage to Caspar David Friedrich.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I don't mistrust reality, of which I know next to nothing. I mistrust the picture of reality conveyed to us by our senses, which is imperfect and circumscribed.
Gerhard Richter
Image
My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation.
Gerhard Richter
Image
How could one be in this world without feeling dismayed by it? Even if one paints flowers and gingerbread.
Gerhard Richter
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 important colour - the ideal colour for indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, despair. In other words, for states of being and situations that affect one, and for which one would like to find a visual expression.
Gerhard Richter
Image
All photographs are far more important than any painting.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I believe that you always have to believe. It's the only way after all we both believe that we will do this exhibition. But I can't believe in God, as such, he's either too big or too small for me, and always incomprehensible, unbelievable.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I am thankful that the church exists, thankful that it has done such great things, giving us laws, for instance - 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not', and established Goodness and Evil. That's what all religions do, and as soon as we try to replace them, worldly religions like fascism and communism take over.
Gerhard Richter
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 rashly and wrongly. Of course, you can ignore dreams, but that would be a shame, because they're useful.
Gerhard Richter
Image
I was a student, and as such you generally rely on prior models of how to make art, but these were not satisfying. Then I discovered in photos what had been missing in paintings namely that they make a terrific variety of statements and have great substance. That is what I wanted to convey to paintings and apply to it.
Gerhard Richter
Image
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
Image
Art shows us how to see things that are constructive and good, and to be an active part of that.
Gerhard Richter