‘Gerhard Richter: Tireless painter’ by Belinda Luscombe
2026
Michael Armitage, Kerry James Marshall, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Gerhard Richter are among the inaugural Time100 Art list of the Most Influential People in Art. Also included are David Zwirner and gallery architect Annabelle Selldorf.
“People won’t stop painting,” Gerhard Richter told TIME in 2012, “just as they won’t stop making music or dancing.” Five years later, Richter announced he would in fact stop painting, citing his age. But the 94-year-old continues to create, drawing in pencil every day in his studio. (“I don’t believe in God,” he told TIME. “So for me, art is a substitute.”) Richter, who was educated both in strictly figurative techniques in former East Germany and a more expressionist style after he defected to West Germany in 1961, is revered for both his blurred photorealistic works and his abstract pieces. While several prominent artists cite Richter as an influence, his legacy is less about a particular style of painting than a set of beliefs: that realism and abstraction can coexist, and that photography can be both source and subject. As demonstrated by recent shows including a major retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, a show in New York City, and a current one in Arles, the appetite for his work hasn’t slowed. In May, one of his iconic photorealistic candle paintings sold for $35 million at auction.
Read more at Time.