There's much to say about Gerhard Richter, there's a long life full of interesting and always zeitgeisty works to cover. But this is not an essay, these are just 500 words to give you a quick of the kind of works he became so famous for. Gerhard Richter is an icon, a landmark in the world of visual arts. I guess this is true not just for Germany, but for the global art industry as a whole. His pieces successfully create record prices in the art circle. Whatever he does seems to become an almost unreal success.

I guess what makes him unique in many ways is his ability to recognize trends and moods within current societies. His works always seem to be fresh and up to date. Whenever one technique seems to age, he shifts his efforts away to the next one and creates something remarkable out of it. Every single time. He seems to be able to invent himself anew whenever a new innovation seem to be necessary. It would be misleading to call him trendy, though. His analysis of the world often goes much deeper than that.

He was always interested in the main topics of politics, nationality, society and current affairs. All through his life he maintained an Atlas, an encyclopedia, where he put in all his current thoughts, ideas and important images that caught his attention. He used this Atlas almost like a to do list for future projects.

Gerhard Richter was born in 1932 in Dresden, East Germany. He survived Hitler and World War II. After the war Germany was split in East and West, the Berlin Wall was built. Just in time he was able to emigrate to the West in 1961 via Berlin and settled in Düsseldorf. He began his second education at the famous Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Karl Otto Götz. He married three times, his second wife was the influential and highly praised artist and sculptor Lisa Genzken. All of his paintings we know today were created after his emigration.

Portrait Liz Kertelge, 1966, oil on canvas

Probably most famous are his photorealistic paintings, the paintings with the blur effect. He used photographs or newspaper articles to create large scale, almost photorealistic paintings. In a second process these paintings are artificially blurred using a dry brush to soften all the edges and details.

Grau, 1976, oil on canvas

In his abstract works, which are often just called "Abstract painting", he's mostly interested in the dynamics of the paint itself, the way it drys, the way it builds up different textures. Many monochromatic or gray images were created during that phase.

Abstract Painting (Canaletto), 1990, oil on canvas

Later he often used a different method to create abstract impressions. He used a squeegee to apply large, rough and often directional layers of paint over already existing artworks. The original meaning of the images was often covered and hidden that way. A new layer of paint and of meaning started to evolve.

Six Colours, 1966, varnish on canvas

Color chart paintings influenced Richter's work all through his career. Often arranged in manifold permutations of 10, 256 or even 4900 brightly colored square plates these compositions are often presented in huge image grids to celebrate and understand the way pure color works and is perceived, alone or in context. His latest and probably one of his most influential works with that technique in mind is the window for the Cologne cathedral.

All images of this post are taken during my recent visit of the exhibition "Gerhard Richter. On Display" showing three rooms of some of Richter's earlier works in the Neue Museum Nuremberg.