Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Gerhard Richter

Quote by Gerhard Richter

“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.”

Quote by Gerhard Richter

Create image

Author

Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter

German visual artist known for his unique painting style and diverse creative techniques. Richter's works span a wide range of styles from abstraction to figuration, and his career has spanned over half a century, profoundly influencing contemporary art. more

You May Also Like

“I believe I am looking for rightness. My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation. In nature everything is always right: the structure is right, the proportions are good, the colours fit the forms. If you imitate that in painting, it becomes false.”

IfsBelieveArtRealityWantedFormI BelievePaintingFitStructureColourProportionImitationCorresponding
Book:Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007
Create image

“These pictures possibly give rise to questions of political content or historical truth. Neither interests me in this instance. And although even my motivation for painting them is probably of no significance, I am trying to put a name to it here, as an articulation, parallel to the pictures, as it were, of my disquiet and of my opinion.”

GivingTryingArtPoliticalMotivationNamesInterestOpinionPaintingHistoricalInstanceSignificanceParallelsArticulationHistorical Truth
Author:Gerhard Richter
Create image

“I wanted to say something different: the pictures are also a leave-taking, in several respects. Factually: these specific persons are dead; as a general statement, death is leave-taking. And then ideologically: a leave-taking from a specific doctrine of salvation and, beyond that, from the illusion that unacceptable circumstances of life can be changed by this conventional expedient of violent struggle.”

PersonsArtDifferentWantedStruggleChangedPaintingCircumstancesIllusionSalvationViolentStatementsDoctrineConventional
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
Create image

“And then the work bears a strong sense of leave-taking for me personally. It ends the work I began in the 1960s (paintings from black-and-white photographs), with a compressed summation that precludes any possible continuation. And so it is a leave-taking from thoughts and feelings of my own on a very basic level. Not that this is a deliberate act, of course; it is a quasi-automatic sequence of disintegration and reformation which I can perceive, as always, only in retrospect.”

ArtI CanEndsFeelingsCoursesStrongBlackMy OwnWhiteLevelsPaintingBearsPhotographPerceiveBlack And WhiteDeliberateSequence1960sReformationRetrospectThoughts And FeelingsContinuationDisintegration
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
Create image

“There was no special event that made me decide. I had collected some photos and the idea was in the back of my mind for a long time. It was growing and growing, so finally I said, 'I must paint this.' I come from East Germany and am not a Marxist, so of course at the time I had no sympathy for the ideas, or for the ideology that these people represented. I couldn't understand, but I was still impressed. Like everyone, I was touched. It was an exceptional moment for Germany.”

PeopleMindLongArtMadeSaidStillsIdeasMomentsCoursesGrowingSpecialEventsPaintingLong TimePaintEastIdeologyGermanyTouchedImpressedExceptionalOf My MindMarxistNo SympathyEast GermanySpecial Events
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
Create image

“I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.”

IfsKnowsWayArtImportantHardPlayChoicesCoursesChanceDoorsPaintingOriginalsI RealizedOpeningAbstractArbitraryAbstract Painting
Book:Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007
Create image