Richter was born in Dresden, Saxony, and grew up in Reichenau, Lower Silesia, and in Waltersdorf (Zittauer Gebirge) in the Upper Lusatian countryside. He left school after tenth grade and apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, before studying at the...
[more]Richter was born in Dresden, Saxony, and grew up in Reichenau, Lower Silesia, and in Waltersdorf (Zittauer Gebirge) in the Upper Lusatian countryside. He left school after tenth grade and apprenticed as an advertising and stage-set painter, before studying at the Dresden Art Academy. In 1948 he terminated the higher professional school in Zittau, and, between 1949 and 1951, was trained there in writing as well as in stage and advertising painting. In 1950 his application for membership in the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (Dresden University of Visual Arts, founded in 1764) was rejected. He finally began his study at the Dresden Academy of Arts in 1951. His teachers were Karl von Appen, Ulrich Lohmar and Will Grohmann. In these early days of his career he prepared a wall painting ("Communion with Picasso", 1955) for the refectory of this Academy of Arts as part of his B.A. A further mural followed within the Hygienemusem (German Hygienic Museum) with the title („Lebensfreude“, which means "Joy of life") for his diploma.
Both paintings had been painted over for ideological reasons after Richter escaped from East to West Germany (2 months before the building of the Berlin wall); after unification of both German states, the wall painting "Joy of life" (1956) was uncovered in two places in the stairway of the German Hygienic Museum, and after the millennium these two uncovered windows with a look at the "Joy of Life" has been newly recovered. From 1957 to 1961 Richter worked as a master trainee on the academy and took orders for the former state of the GDR. During this time he worked intensively at murals ("Arbeiterkampf", which means "Worker fight"), on paintings in oil (f.e. portraits of the well known East-German actress "Angelica Domroese" and of Richter's first wife "Ema"), on various self portraits and furthermore on a panorama of Dresden with the neutral name "Stadtbild" ("Townscape", 1956).
Richter taught as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, in Hamburg, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and became tenured professor in 1971 at Düsseldorf Art Academy. In 1983, Richter resettled from Düsseldorf to Cologne, where he still lives today.
Richter married Marianne Eufinger in 1957. Nine years later, she gave birth to his first daughter, Betty. He married his second wife, the sculptor Isa Genzken, in 1982. Richter had his son, Moritz, with his third wife, Sabine Moritz, the year they were married, 1995. One year later, his second daughter, Ella Maria, was born.
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