Gerhard Richter

Richter began making blurred photo-based paintings in the 1960s after moving from East Germany to West Germany in 1961. The blur makes the image look photographic while also making memory, evidence, and certainty feel unstable.

October 18, 1977 is Richter's 1988 cycle about members of the Red Army Faction and their deaths in Stammheim Prison. The works use gray, blurred imagery to avoid turning the political violence into either propaganda or simple biography.

He is famous for both, which is part of why his career is unusual. Works like Betty from 1988 sit beside large abstract paintings made with squeegees, including later series such as Cage from 2006.

Richter was born in Dresden in 1932 and trained in East Germany before crossing to the West shortly before the Berlin Wall went up. That split biography shaped his interest in official images, family photographs, and the politics of memory.