Daniel Richter on Art, Life, and Everything Inbetween
‘When art fulfils its promise, it expands something within us, and offers some kind of truth,’ says the German painter who began his career creating album art.
Daniel Richter, Nehmen Sie die Perücke ab, 2023 Oil on canvas 90 1/2 x 66 7/8 inches (230 x 170 cm)
‘I find artworks, especially paintings, most interesting when they seek to convey something to the viewer that is not entirely translatable through language, or even reason,’ German artist Daniel Richter says.
‘When art fulfils its promise, it expands something within us, and it offers some kind of truth – whatever construction that may be.’
Richter’s belief that art comes from a place we can never quite explain is not an uncommon one, however it is one that is particularly pertinent to his own work.
Daniel Richter - Roimetete. Oil on canvas91 3/4 x 68 1/8 x 2 3/8 inches (233 x 173 x 6cm)
Richter (no relation to Gerhard) was born in Eutin, a small town in Northern Germany, and rose to prominence in the 1990s when he arrived upon a Berlin fine art scene after fruitful years spent creating posters and record sleeves for a number of bands in his adopted hometown of Hamburg.
‘In the early 1980s when I was young, punk was the way out,’ he told autre magazine in 2022. ‘So, I moved to Hamburg. Hamburg was a city with lots of squatters and a red light district with a certain underground appeal. I couldn’t make music and I didn’t want to make music because you have to rehearse with others, which is how I realized I could draw. So that was the natural role the subculture chose for me.’
