The archetype of the hero Kurt Barnert in the movie is Gerhard Richter, who is called "the greatest artist of this era".
Gerhard Richter, (1932—)
As the most respected artist in Germany, he had his biographical film as early as 2011. The film used the method of record to film his creative process in his later years.
What this film focuses on is the story of Gerhard, in order to get rid of his identity as a socialist painter, pursue becoming a true artist, go to a freer and more modern West Germany and finally find his own creative style.
In reality, Gerhard Richter left school at the age of 16, travelled around the country with an amateur singing and dancing group, and then entered the Dresden Academy of Art to study for a master's degree. A huge work in the socialist realism style of Richter's early works is still shining in a health care museum there today.
Richter has changed his painting styles and subjects leaps and bounds in the past 40 years. When Germany argued fiercely in the 1960s about re-expanding military preparations, he drew the "Mustang echelon" of American aircraft:
original:
Jet Fighter, 1963
Do you still remember the pictures of his aunt and himself based on the photos?
Original painting:
Women with Child, 1965
Realistic works based on photos are a style that the painter has tried again and again afterwards. The theme of women and children has also been continuously presented in his paintings 30 years later.
S. with Child, 1995
In the 1990s, he showed the kind audiences colorful landscape paintings and portraits of his wife, Moritz, holding a baby like a virgin.
S. with Child, 1995
Moritz, 2000
One more pair:
S. with Child, 1995:
As mentioned in the movie, even though Richter took an apparently distance and indifferent attitude towards his paintings, because he only simulated a photo, in fact many paintings still have personal motives. For example, it is the original work created by his wife after giving birth:
"My indifferent, indifferent attitude to the painting topics, etc., is just an excuse to protect myself. At the time I was worried that my paintings were considered too "sentimental." Now I don’t care, and I can admit that these incidents and me It is very relevant. It is not accidental to draw these tragic figures, murderers and suicides, people who did nothing."
Similar male paintings in the movie:
Basel, 1963
Since 1962, Gerhard Richter has used gray for different series and themes. The non-color gray also represents the anonymity and distance of the artist to his paintings.
Untitled, 1968
"Gray is also a color in the end, and sometimes the most important color for me." Nevertheless, this gray painting led Richter's art into a dead end in the 1970s. He had to completely change his painting method in order to be liberated: "My paintings were becoming increasingly impersonal at the time, and usually ended up with nothing but a single gray or color arrangement... After painting so many grays, I resolutely made a saving decision: to live, to paint multi-color paintings, complex and kitsch paintings."
180 color, 1971
192 Color, 1966
That's right, the subsequent painting is what the male host said in the movie: "I am more interested in abstract paintings now."
Abstract Painting, 1972
"I look out from the window, and the scenes with different tones, colors and proportions outside are real to me. This is true and correct. This fragment of nature and any fragment of nature I keep making requests and it is also a model for my painting.” Richter believes that every piece of nature bounded by window frames, no matter how accidental it is to people, randomly selected or incomplete, Possess "authenticity" and "correctness". Richter uses incomplete, arbitrary, and irrational painting schemes to incorporate the above-mentioned experience of glimpses out of the window into his abstract paintings.
Abstract Painting, 1980
Imitating the abstract paintings drawn from the natural world seen from the window frame, it creates an intuitive model of the real world that is more and more complex, requires more explanation, and is more uncontrollable. Such models are a derivative of reality. Unlike Richter's mirror paintings, they not only reflect reality, but focus on its natural model, such as a convex lens, with only its most important features concise. As early as 1964, Richter mentioned a similar succinctness in his early photographic paintings on soft style: "Maybe I also erased unnecessary unimportant information." Although this kind of abstract painting can neither explain the relevant reality, If they can't solve their problems, they can still be comforting.
Abstract Painting, 2006
Whether it is an undefined quick-shot family painting, or a vaguely naked baby boy, whether it is a rigorous colorful pastoral scenery, or a misty portrait, grass and clouds, you can feel vaguely The copied reality of the society shows the artist's work style that is both precise and meticulous in his painting characteristics and at a distance from it. French newspapers commented on his work as "very German style".
All in all, Richter is a varied artist. He tried his best to control himself, refused to imitate the style of others, and chose each theme as meticulously as the "Beetle". On the way to find the world behind reality, Richter understood painting as "another form of thinking."
Abstract Painting, 2016
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