Artists Who Inspired Gerhard Richter

Richter’s exposure to Pollock’s work in 1959 at Documenta II in Kassel was a revelation that would reverberate throughout his career. Pollock’s unrestrained style, where paint splatters, drips, and pours onto the canvas, was unlike anything Richter had previously encountered. Pollock’s ‘action’ painting rejected traditional brushwork and conventional composition, instead celebrating the spontaneous, instinctive gestures that brought raw energy and emotion directly to the canvas. Witnessing this radical freedom redirected Richter, who had been trained under the strict constraints of Socialist Realism in East Germany, to envision art as a space for unrestrained experimentation. Pollock’s work demonstrated that the act of creation itself could be a visual language, one that revealed as much about the process of painting as it did about the finished work.

This radical embrace of chance introduced Richter to the notion that art could be a dialogue between intention and accident, a concept he later employed in his celebrated Abstraktes Bild series. In these abstract works, Richter lets colours bleed and mix organically, using a squeegee to drag paint across the surface, creating textures and patterns that appear both random and deliberate. This method captures the sense of freedom Pollock embodied, yet Richter brought his own order and structure, orchestrating these moments of spontaneity within a broader visual coherence.

For Richter, Pollock’s work represented a fusion of control and release, and it was this balance that became central to Richter’s philosophy. Pollock showed that art could mirror the volatility of nature, with its blend of precision and unpredictability. In natural phenomena, clouds forming, rivers flowing, plants growing, Richter saw a parallel to Pollock’s work, where beauty lies in patterns that emerge without rigid design. This insight led Richter to view his own art as a similar expression of life’s inherent unpredictability, and he embraced this principle in his abstract paintings, inviting chance as an active collaborator.

Lucio Fontana’s pioneering work reshaped Richter’s perception of what a painting could be, expanding his understanding of art as a spatial and sensory experience. Fontana’s radical Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept) series, in which he famously sliced, punctured, or perforated his canvases, was a daring redefinition of painting’s role. By breaking through the canvas surface, Fontana introduced a three-dimensional element that transformed paintings into objects existing in real space. His work invited viewers to look beyond the pictorial plane, merging art with physical reality and calling attention to the voids and spaces that existed within the work. This audacious approach to painting as an object rather than an image encouraged Richter to explore the possibilities of disrupting the picture plane to evoke deeper spatial and psychological dimensions.

Fontana’s work also influenced Richter’s fascination with glass, an inherently transparent material that defies the traditional expectation of opacity in painting. Glass became both canvas and lens in Richter’s work, a way of manipulating perspective and inviting viewers to look not at the painting but through it. Works like Pane of Glass (2002) were directly inspired by Fontana’s desire to break the boundaries of the canvas. By using glass, Richter created surfaces that were not only reflective but immersive, making the viewer an active participant in the work. Glass introduced an element of shifting perception; depending on the angle, light, and positioning of the viewer, each piece would reflect, distort, or absorb the surrounding environment. This interaction with the viewer was a continuation of Fontana’s philosophy, inviting audiences to engage in a dialogue with the piece rather than passively observe it.

Fontana’s influence remains a significant undercurrent in Richter’s work, visible in his approach to materials, his challenge to surface conventions, and his interest in art as an experience of depth, reflection, and transformation. Fontana did not merely alter his canvas; he opened it up to reveal the infinite possibilities beyond it, a concept that Richter would carry forward.

The influences of Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee on Richter’s work are evident in his exploration of colour and structure, blending geometry with the emotive power of colour in ways that challenge traditional painting. Mondrian’s disciplined, minimalist approach to art sought harmony through precision, believing that by eliminating any traces of representational forms, he could achieve a universal balance. His signature grid paintings, composed of vibrant colour blocks contained within a strict grid, inspired Richter to consider how a structured arrangement of colours could convey complexity without the need for overt imagery. In works like 1024 Farben (1974), Richter arranges coloured squares in a systematic grid that at first glance appears orderly, almost like a scientific colour chart. However, the piece transcends mere structure, transforming into a vibrant symphony of hues that seem to pulse with life and movement. Here, Richter borrows Mondrian’s formal discipline, but infuses it with his own fascination for the unpredictability of colour.

Richter was equally captivated by Klee, whose whimsical and deeply intuitive approach to colour and form provided a counterpoint to Mondrian’s rigidity. While Mondrian’s grids emphasised clarity and control, Klee’s work explored the mysterious dimension of colour. For Klee, colour was a gateway to the inner world, a medium that could evoke subtle emotional undertones and elicit an almost visceral response. His compositions often displayed a delicate balance between spontaneity and structure, with colour taking centre stage as a means of conveying mood and psychological depth.

This sensibility is reflected in Richter’s work, where in his own colour grids, he strikes a balance between these two influences, integrating Mondrian’s structure with Klee’s sensitivity to colour’s emotional resonance. Rather than viewing colour merely as a compositional tool, Richter treats it as the subject itself, allowing each hue to contribute to a larger narrative that is abstract yet powerfully evocative. His grids become fields where colour relationships can shift, overlap, and interact, creating a dynamic visual experience that encouraged Richter to approach colour as a vehicle for exploring human perception and the boundaries between order and chaos.

Francis Bacon’s often unsettling approach to the human form offered Richter a profound example of how art could probe the depths of human psychology, vulnerability, and existential dread. However, where Bacon’s visceral distortions evoke the immediate physical and emotional anguish of his subjects, Richter’s work often reflects a more distant, contemplative perspective. Bacon’s depictions of the human body, often contorted and twisted, place the viewer face-to-face with the frailty and suffering inherent in existence. His figures, continually trapped in confined spaces or surrounded by dark voids, emphasise a profound sense of isolation and existential terror, inviting viewers into the psyche of his subjects in a way that is at once intimate and haunting.

Richter, influenced by Bacon’s examination of psychological states, developed his own methods to explore the fragile nature of perception and memory. Instead of employing physical distortions, Richter used blurring and smudging techniques to evoke a sense of impermanence, as though the image itself is slipping away or being altered by the viewer’s own biases. In his 1977 series, Richter takes historical photographs of members of the German Red Army Faction and subjects them to a hazy, obscuring effect, forcing viewers to confront the ambiguity and instability of collective memory. This technique, while subtler than Bacon’s brutal physicality, nonetheless captures the sense of human vulnerability and moral ambiguity, leaving space for viewers to feel the unresolved tensions in these tragic narratives.

Richter’s dialogue with Bacon’s work ultimately reshaped his artistic philosophy, encouraging him to engage with the human condition through a lens that is both deeply introspective and socially resonant. While Bacon’s work confronts viewers with the visceral reality of suffering and isolation, Richter’s paintings encourage a quieter, more reflective engagement, where distortion becomes a metaphor for the transient nature of all experience.

Richter’s work, while rooted in modern abstraction, also reflects the influence of classical art, particularly the richly layered and emotive compositions of Titian, the Renaissance master of colour and atmosphere. Titian’s mastery of light, shadow, and texture, in works such as The Gypsy Madonna (1510-11), provided Richter with an enduring example of how painting can evoke deep emotional resonance, transcending the surface of the canvas to immerse viewers in a world both vibrant and contemplative. For Richter, Titian’s nuanced approach to colour and composition was not simply a historical legacy but a foundation from which contemporary art could draw to explore new realms of expression.

In 1973, Richter’s exploration of this Renaissance influence culminated in his series called Annunciation after Titian, inspired by a postcard reproduction of Titian’s Annunciation from the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice. Richter used this postcard as a base for five interpretations, transforming Titian’s original scene into abstract, blurred compositions. His choice to soften and dissolve the forms in this series marked a departure from his usual abstraction, using gentle brushstrokes to invite viewers to experience the spiritual essence of the Renaissance work through an abstracted lens, bridging classical reverence with contemporary exploration.

In Richter’s diverse body of work, we see an artist deeply engaged with both the legacy of those who came before him and the boundaries of contemporary art itself. By drawing from disparate sources, Richter creates art that is both personal and universal, evoking memory, emotion, and the human experience in ways that transcend the limitations of a single style or medium. Each influence he absorbs transforms through his distinctive approach, becoming something uniquely his own. In this way, Richter’s work offers a profound reflection on art’s enduring power to distil and communicate complex truths across centuries and styles. Through his exploration, Richter reminds us that art is not static, but an ever-evolving conversation that speaks to our shared human experience.