Born on February 9th, 1932, in Dresden, Germany, Richter was raised during the Second World War becoming an artist in Eastern Germany and escaping Communism in 1961. His life has followed a series of historical events whose memories are kept alive through his work. From the beginning, Richter explored different paths simultaneously, alternating between the abstract and the figurative, developing a profusion of themes, mediums, and techniques. Deeply affected by the Second World War, he made forays into his own memory as well as that of Germany. History continuing as the dominant theme, he worked from photographs: from an annihilated Dresden, to the Baader-Meinhof gang, to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Ever unpredictable, Richter has found inspiration in the classic Italian Grand Masters such as Titian (Annunciation after Titian) and painted an immense multi-coloured checkerboard (Colour Chart). When the artist, who has never adhered to any particular convention, fashion, or trend, embarked on his most abstract series (Abstract Paintings), his innovative; overturning buckets of colour that he proceeded to crush onto ten-meter square canvases.

Gerhard Richter

One of the most famous artists to emerge from post-war Germany, Gerhard Richter is known for his prolific, varied, and widely influential painting practice.

At the end of the 1990’s Richter started to create the first series of his famous „Schwarz, Rot, Gold“ paintings (from which Schwarz, rot, gold from 1999 was auctioned at Sotheby´s New York, in November 2014 for $365,000). For these –at the beginning- small-scale works he applied black, red, and gold resin painting in vertical stripes directly on glass.

In reminiscence to these glass paintings “Schwarz, Rot, Gold” and the large-size “Schwarz, Rot, Gold”, which he composed for the German Bundestag in 1999, he chose the same motive for this limited edition. The edition was published to celebrate the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the German reunion. The colors from this series recall the three colors of the German flag. However, the vertical order of the stripes as well as the reflective surface of the glass shows the innovative character of the work.

The Schwarz - Rot - Gold IV editions have been exhibited at the Gerhard Richter: Neue Bilder exhibition, at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne (February - May 2017), and Gerhard Richter: Die Editionen exhibition at the Folkwang Museum, in Essen (April - July 2017).

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“ I wasn’t commissioned to depict the German flag. I was stimulated by the theme, even though Palermo existed and that famous flag by Jasper Johns. „

—Gerhard Richter