Gerhard Richter, Lesende (Reader), 1994 (SFMOMA collection) · © Gerhard Richter · educational reference

Gerhard Richter

1932–present · Germany

Researched by Daniel Bilmes, painter and educator.

Richter ran two practices in parallel and refused to merge them. For the abstracts he laid multiple zones of wet oil color on the canvas, sometimes ten or more pigments in independent passages, then dragged a custom rubber squeegee (the Rakel) across in a single committed pass, photographed the result, and decided whether to add another wet layer and drag again. For the photo-paintings he projected a source image from his Atlas archive onto white-primed canvas, traced the outlines, rendered the image in conventional oil, then dragged a soft dry brush across the wet surface to blur it. The blur is mechanical, not optical.

ProcessReductive TemperamentObserver LineageContemporary

Signature moves

The squeegee — drag wet paint across the canvas

Built custom rubber squeegees ("Rakel") in graduated sizes up to several meters wide. Loaded multiple wet color zones onto the canvas, then dragged the squeegee across in a single committed pass.

Why it matters · A brush adds; a squeegee removes and disturbs. Richter's tool argues that paint application can be a subtractive gesture as much as an additive one — and that the painter's control extends only to the decision to drag, not to the precise outcome of the drag. Painters who only ever brush never learn what the squeegee teaches about commitment.

Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting (MoMA), 2002

The Atlas — photographic archive as raw material

Maintained from 1962 onward a personal archive ("Atlas") of photographs — newspaper clippings, family snapshots, found amateur photos, his own reference shots — used as source material for the photo-paintings. Now over 800 panels.

Why it matters · A painter's sources are not neutral. Richter's Atlas argues that the photograph itself is raw material — equivalent in status to a tube of paint. The archive is part of the practice, not preparatory to it. Painters who do not curate their own source material work on whatever the algorithm or the magazine handed them.

Gerhard Richter, Atlas (published edition), Cologne, 1997

Photo-painting blur — drag the brush over the wet image

Painted from photographs in a conventional manner, then while the image was still wet, dragged a soft dry brush across the surface to introduce a controlled focal blur. The blur is mechanical, not optical.

Why it matters · A blur invented at the end is structurally different from a blur present in the source. Richter's gesture argues that the painter's last decision can dissolve all of the painter's previous decisions — and that this dissolution is itself a position about photographic truth. Painters who treat finish as the protection of their work miss the option of finish as undoing.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter: Text, 2009

Color charts — randomize the matrix

Produced a sequence of paintings (1966 onward, culminating in the 1024 Colors series of 1973) presenting grids of pure tube colors arranged by mathematical permutation rather than by aesthetic decision.

Why it matters · A randomized palette is a position about taste. Richter's color charts argue that the painter's personal preferences can be removed from the work without removing the work itself. Painters who never run a system against their own taste never find out where their taste actually is.

Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, 2002

Refuse signature style — run modes in parallel

Worked simultaneously across photo-painting, squeegee abstraction, color charts, gray monochromes, and glass works — refusing to consolidate into a single recognizable signature.

Why it matters · A signature style is a marketable asset and a methodological cage. Richter's discipline of running multiple modes side by side is the cleanest argument in late-20th-century painting for treating the practice as a portfolio of investigations rather than a single voice. Painters who lock into one mode trade depth for recognizability.

Studio

Light: Cologne studio since 1983 — large warehouse with high north light. Earlier studios in Düsseldorf (1961–1983).
Position: Standing for the squeegee work — the large abstracts require the painter to walk the length of the canvas. Sitting or standing for the photo-paintings depending on scale.
Working distance: Variable. Squeegee paintings require the painter to physically traverse the canvas; photo-paintings work at a more conventional easel distance.
Session length: Squeegee abstracts are typically completed in single sessions or short series of sessions — the wet-into-wet disturbance has a working window that cannot be extended. Photo-paintings unfold over weeks.
Tools: Custom-built rubber squeegees (Rakel) in graduated sizes up to several meters · Conventional bristle and sable brushes for the photo-paintings · Soft dry brushes for the photo-painting blur · Photographic enlarger and projector for transferring source images to canvas · The Atlas — physical archive of source photographs, organized in panels
Notes: Maintains a digital catalogue raisonné of his own work — every painting is documented, dated, and ordered numerically. The discipline of self-cataloguing is part of the practice.

Source: Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting (MoMA), 2002

Palette

Ground: Stretched canvas, primed white. Some squeegee works produced on aluminum or wood panels for the smoother substrate.
Whites: Titanium white · Zinc white
Earths: Yellow ochre · Raw umber · Burnt umber
Colors: Pure tube oils across a wide range — cadmium reds, cadmium yellows, viridian, phthalo blue, ultramarine, cobalt — used in the squeegee abstracts in deep multi-pigment layers · Muted greys and earth tones for the photo-paintings
Blacks: Ivory black · Mars black
Medium: Linseed oil, applied at multiple consistencies depending on mode. Squeegee work requires paint loaded enough to drag without smearing into uniformity. Photo-painting work uses thinner paint to allow the soft-brush blur.
Quantity: Generous palette setting for the squeegee work — the gesture requires physical paint volume on the canvas before the drag. Restricted, controlled palette for the photo-paintings.

Source: Gerhard Richter Studio archives, Cologne

Workflow, from blank canvas

1. Squeegee — lay multiple wet color zones
For an abstract work, applied multiple separate zones of wet color across the canvas — sometimes ten or more pigments in independent passages.
Why: The squeegee's drag mixes whatever is on the canvas at the moment of the drag. The painter's control is in the placement of the wet zones, not in the final mix.
2. Squeegee — drag in a single committed pass
Pulled the squeegee across the canvas in a horizontal or vertical pass, dragging and partially mixing the wet color zones into a streaked field.
Why: The drag is one decision. Hesitation produces a uniform smear; commitment produces the layered streaks Richter's abstracts are known for.
3. Squeegee — photograph and decide
Photographed the result. Decided whether the painting was finished or whether to add another wet layer and drag again.
Why: The decision-loop is iterative and binary. Each layer either resolves the work or destroys it — the painting can survive ten passes or be ruined on the second.
4. Photo-painting — project the source
For a photo-painting, projected the chosen source image from the Atlas onto the primed canvas and traced the structural outlines.
Why: The source is the structure. The painter's contribution is in the rendering and the eventual blur, not in the composition.
5. Photo-painting — render conventionally, then blur
Painted the projected image in conventional oil technique. While the surface was still wet, dragged a soft dry brush horizontally or vertically across the image to introduce focal softening.
Why: The blur is the painting's thesis. A photo painted to fidelity is a copy; a photo painted then deliberately undone becomes a position about photographic certainty.

The record, deeper

The studio

The abstracts are not made in one sitting, and most of what he paints is meant to be buried. Barker notes that Richter frequently paints quite detailed underpaintings and may consider them for some time, working in the knowledge that around ninety per cent of that image will be permanently hidden by the paint that goes over it. Her reading of the layer sequence, offered as a conservator's inference rather than a documented schedule, is a relatively thin underlayer that dries fast and is then left a week or two, followed by a thicker layer left a few days until it is touch-dry but still plastic. The drag has to meet the layer beneath it in the right state, so the waiting is part of the method.
Tate, "How did Richter Make his Paintings?", paintings conservator Rachel Barker in conversation with curator Mark Godfrey, Gerhard Richter: Panorama.

The materials

The squeegee is not rubber. Tate's conservation study of three of his abstracts describes the tool as a length of flexible Perspex fitted with a wooden handle, and it is the edge of that Perspex that etches, scrapes, or smears the paint across the surface. He uses it two ways. Loaded wet, with oil paint distributed along its length, it lays down a smooth buttery wet-into-wet surface. Clean and dry, it disturbs the paint already on the canvas instead of adding any. He also works into the layers with a wide-headed palette knife, gouging features out of the paint, and sometimes cuts into the top layer and peels the skin off it.
Tate, "How did Richter Make his Paintings?", paintings conservator Rachel Barker in conversation with curator Mark Godfrey, from study of Wald 3 (1990), Abstract Painting 1997 (CR 849-2), and Abstract Painting 1999 (CR 858-6) for Gerhard Richter: Panorama.

Refusals — what they would not do

Refused signature style — kept multiple parallel modes active throughout his career.
Refused subject hierarchy — political subject matter (Baader-Meinhof Cycle) given the same handling as a candle still life.
Refused to write a painter's manifesto in the conventional sense — kept his published statements terse and provisional.
Refused commercial portraiture and conventional commissions; chose subjects from his Atlas archive instead.
Refused to consolidate his two main modes (photo-painting and squeegee abstract) into a unified style — exhibited them side by side throughout his career.

Reference

Primary source: The Atlas — Richter's personal archive of photographic source material. Newspaper clippings, family photographs, found amateur photos, deliberate reference shots taken for specific paintings.
Photography: Photography is the primary subject of one half of his practice (the photo-paintings) and a documentary tool for the other half (he photographs every stage of every squeegee work).

Exceptions

Some squeegee abstracts originate without any source — pure paint-led decisions. Richter himself has emphasized the absence of preparatory drawing for many of these works.
The Cologne Cathedral South Transept window (2007) was generated by computer randomization of color and placement rather than from photographic source.

Lineage

Every teacher and student below sits on the site-wide teacher-student map.

Teachers

Heinz Lohmar (Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, East Germany) · 1951–1956 — Conventional Socialist Realist training. Richter learned a thorough academic technique that he later spent decades dismantling. The training was load-bearing in a negative sense — he could not have run his anti-style practice without it.
Karl Otto Götz (Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, West Germany) · 1961–1964 — After fleeing East Germany in 1961, Richter studied with Götz, an Art Informel painter. The introduction to Western abstract practice and to the conceptual avant-garde milieu in Düsseldorf.

Influences

Marcel Duchamp — the readymade attitude toward source material; the Atlas owes its conceptual structure to Duchamp's repositioning of found objects.
Andy Warhol — encountered in the early 1960s; the photographic-source method shares a lineage but Richter pushed it toward painterly disturbance rather than reproductive consistency.
Sigmar Polke and Konrad Fischer — Düsseldorf peers in the early 1960s; the "Capitalist Realism" group statement (1963) was a joint position.

Students

Taught at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie 1971–1993. Direct students include Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth (both via the Bechers but in dialogue with Richter's photo-painting practice).
Influence runs more broadly through the late-20th-century international photo-painting and abstract-painting fields than through any specific student lineage.

In their own words

“Painting is the making of an analogy for something nonvisual and incomprehensible.”

— Gerhard Richter, Notes, 1981, 1981

“I have no method, only my decisions.”

— Gerhard Richter, Studio interview, quoted in Storr

“I see no sense in painting today, but at the same time I see no sense in not painting today.”

— Gerhard Richter, Notes, 1985, 1985

Techniques and practices

squeegee-rakel-drag

photo-painting-blur

atlas-photographic-archive

color-chart-randomization

parallel-mode-practice

wet-into-wet-disturbance

refused-signature-style

Questions and answers

What is Gerhard Richter's squeegee technique?

He built custom rubber squeegees, called Rakel, in graduated sizes up to several meters wide. He laid multiple zones of wet oil color on the canvas, sometimes ten or more pigments in independent passages, then dragged the squeegee across in a single committed pass. The drag mixes whatever is wet on the canvas at that moment, so his control lay in the placement of the wet zones, not in the final mix.

What palette and materials did Richter use?

For the squeegee abstracts he used pure tube oils across a wide range (cadmium reds, cadmium yellows, viridian, phthalo blue, ultramarine, cobalt) in deep multi-pigment layers, with titanium white, zinc white, ivory black, Mars black, plus yellow ochre and the umbers. The photo-paintings ran on a restricted palette of muted greys and earth tones. His medium was linseed oil at multiple consistencies, loaded thick for the squeegee drag and thinned for the photo-paintings. He worked on stretched canvas primed white, with some squeegee works on aluminum or wood panels for the smoother substrate.

How did Richter blur his photo-paintings?

He painted the projected source image in conventional oil technique first. Then, while the surface was still wet, he dragged a soft dry brush horizontally or vertically across the image to introduce a controlled focal blur. The blur is mechanical, not optical, and it is the last decision in the painting, made to partly dissolve the decisions before it.

What was Richter's Atlas?

A personal archive of source photographs he maintained from 1962 onward, organized in physical panels, now over 800 of them. It held newspaper clippings, family snapshots, found amateur photos, and his own reference shots taken for specific paintings. The archive was part of the practice itself, not preparation for it.

Who taught Gerhard Richter, and whom did he teach?

He trained under Heinz Lohmar at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1951 to 1956, a conventional Socialist Realist education. After fleeing East Germany in 1961 he studied with Karl Otto Götz, an Art Informel painter, at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie. He later taught at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie from 1971 to 1993, where direct students include Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth.

What did Richter refuse to do?

He refused a signature style, running photo-painting, squeegee abstraction, color charts, gray monochromes, and glass works side by side throughout his career. He refused subject hierarchy, giving the Baader-Meinhof Cycle the same handling as a candle still life. He also refused commercial portraiture and conventional commissions, choosing subjects from his Atlas archive instead.

If this painter is your match

You share Richter's instinct that a single signature style is a methodological cage — and the willingness to keep multiple parallel modes alive in the practice rather than consolidate into one recognizable surface.

Borrow this: Pick two modes you have been working in separately — say a tight observational practice and a looser experimental practice. Run both this month, in parallel, on adjacent days. Refuse to merge them into a single style. At the end of the month, hang one painting from each mode side by side and read them as a single body of work.

Adjacent painters

Andrew Wyeth1917–2009

A Brandywine painter who inherited N.C. Wyeth's narrative training but abandoned illustration for egg tempera on gessoed panel, worked the same Pennsylvania farms and Maine houses for seventy years, and built each picture through thousands of cross-hatched tempera strokes over weeks or months.

Cecilia Beaux1855–1942

An acclaimed American portraitist who read her sitters for character, fixed the likeness in a charcoal underdrawing, then built the head in successive layers of impasto and glaze under controlled northern light.

Charles Webster Hawthorne1872–1930

The founder of the Cape Cod School of Art who taught painting in colour spots, posing backlit figures outdoors and working them with a putty knife, mass before detail.

Carel Fabritius1622–1654

Rembrandt's most independent pupil, who reversed his master by laying cool, light-toned grounds, setting a sharply lit figure against a pale wall, and who died young when the Delft gunpowder store exploded.

Primary sources

Gerhard Richter, Atlas (published edition), 1997. Published edition of Richter's ongoing photographic archive (1962–present). The principal direct documentation of his source-material practice.
Hans-Ulrich Obrist (ed.), Gerhard Richter: Text — Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961–2007, 2009. Definitive collection of Richter's own writings and interviews. The principal source for his direct voice on practice and method.
Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting (MoMA), 2002. Major MoMA retrospective catalogue and monograph. Storr conducted extensive studio interviews; the principal English-language source on the squeegee method and the photo-painting blur.
Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné (online and printed editions). Self-maintained catalogue of every painting Richter has produced. The reference document for any specific work.

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