Gerhard Richter is an artist who began painting enlarged copies of black-and-white photographs using only a range of greys. He became known for relying on actual subject matter when painting, even for his abstract works. In the late 1970s he stopped relying on real-life subjects but it is said that his paintings retained a ‘second hand look’ that made his works look as though he was still painting an actual subject.

Gerhard Richter (born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces.

In October 2012, Richter's Abstraktes Bild set an auction record price for a painting by a living artist at $34 million (£21 million). This was exceeded in May 2013 when his 1968 piece Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral square, Milan) was sold for $37.1 million (£24.4 million) in New York. This was further exceeded in February 2015 when his painting Abstraktes Bild sold for $44.52 million (£30.4 million) in London at Sotheby's Contemporary Evening Sale.

Nearly all of Richter's work demonstrates both illusionistic space that seems natural and the physical activity and material of painting—as mutual interferences. For Richter, reality is the combination of new attempts to understand—to represent; in his case, to paint—the world surrounding us. Richter's opinions and perspectives on his own art, and that of the larger art market and various artistic movements, are compiled in a chronological record of "Writings" and interviews. The following quotes are excerpts from the compilation:

"I am a Surrealist."

"My sole concern is the object. Otherwise I would not take so much trouble over my choice of subjects; otherwise I would not paint at all."

"My concern is never art, but always what art can be used for."

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