Daniel Richter *
(born in Lütjenburg 1962)
Scharnier von gestern zu morgen, 2005, signed, titled, dated on the reverse, oil on canvas, 220.3 x 170.2 cm, framed
Provenance:
Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
Sale, Ketterer Kunst, 3 July 2014, lot 416
Private Collection, Northern Germany (acquired from the above)
Punk, not the academy: Daniel Richter, born in Eutin in 1962, emerged from Hamburg's subculture. In the 1980s he designed posters and record covers for rock and punk bands, a school of dissent that still shapes his work today. From 1991 to 1995 he studied under Werner Büttner at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg. He was ultimately drawn to painting by the gleeful rule-breaking that the circle around Büttner, Albert Oehlen and Martin Kippenberger had made its programme in the 1980s. Richter worked for a time as Albert Oehlen's assistant and remains close to these fellow artists to this day. Until 2000 he explored abstraction with great intensity. After that, the figure took over his canvases, and Richter became one of the defining protagonists of contemporary painting in Germany.
The painting offered here is striking from the outset for its large format. It belongs to the sought-after group of works depicting figures seen from behind, which Richter began in 2005. A male figure, viewed from the back, stands isolated in a space that defies any sense of location. Richter himself cites Kippenberger's self-portrait Martin, ab in die Ecke und schäm Dich (Martin, Into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself), 1989, as pivotal. He sees it not as a quotation in the strict sense, but as a spark of inspiration (cf. Christoph Heinrich, Beachte den Vogel!, in: Daniel Richter. Die Palette 1995–2007, exh. cat. Hamburg et al., Cologne 2007, p. 15). Here, too, the figure stands facing the wall. It is naked, yet never fully exposed. The gestural brushwork and the mist-like, blurring contours make it seem to dissolve before the wall. The wall itself shimmers with prismatic, colour-filled triangles, a homage to the charts of colour theory and thus another art-historical wink.
In 2004 Richter was appointed Professor of Painting at the Universität der Künste Berlin, and in 2006 he moved to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. His international presence remains as strong as ever. From December 2025 to February 2026, Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig devoted a comprehensive retrospective of 58 works to him, entitled TORF, on the occasion of his receiving the Art Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Business Community. It was the first major exhibition of his work in northern Germany in over 20 years. In 2025 Thaddaeus Ropac presented his new series Mit elben Birnen in Salzburg. The same year, Richter featured in the group exhibition Remix at the Albertina Modern in Vienna. In early summer 2026 GRIMM in Amsterdam followed with his sixth solo exhibition there, marking two decades of collaboration with the gallery. Further recent solo exhibitions took place at the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Space K in Seoul and the Museo Ateneo Veneto in Venice. In 2023 Oscar-winning director Pepe Danquart portrayed him in the documentary film Daniel Richter.
Specialist: Joëlle Romba
(born in Lütjenburg 1962)
Scharnier von gestern zu morgen, 2005, signed, titled, dated on the reverse, oil on canvas, 220.3 x 170.2 cm, framed
Provenance:
Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
Sale, Ketterer Kunst, 3 July 2014, lot 416
Private Collection, Northern Germany (acquired from the above)
Punk, not the academy: Daniel Richter, born in Eutin in 1962, emerged from Hamburg's subculture. In the 1980s he designed posters and record covers for rock and punk bands, a school of dissent that still shapes his work today. From 1991 to 1995 he studied under Werner Büttner at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg. He was ultimately drawn to painting by the gleeful rule-breaking that the circle around Büttner, Albert Oehlen and Martin Kippenberger had made its programme in the 1980s. Richter worked for a time as Albert Oehlen's assistant and remains close to these fellow artists to this day. Until 2000 he explored abstraction with great intensity. After that, the figure took over his canvases, and Richter became one of the defining protagonists of contemporary painting in Germany.
The painting offered here is striking from the outset for its large format. It belongs to the sought-after group of works depicting figures seen from behind, which Richter began in 2005. A male figure, viewed from the back, stands isolated in a space that defies any sense of location. Richter himself cites Kippenberger's self-portrait Martin, ab in die Ecke und schäm Dich (Martin, Into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself), 1989, as pivotal. He sees it not as a quotation in the strict sense, but as a spark of inspiration (cf. Christoph Heinrich, Beachte den Vogel!, in: Daniel Richter. Die Palette 1995–2007, exh. cat. Hamburg et al., Cologne 2007, p. 15). Here, too, the figure stands facing the wall. It is naked, yet never fully exposed. The gestural brushwork and the mist-like, blurring contours make it seem to dissolve before the wall. The wall itself shimmers with prismatic, colour-filled triangles, a homage to the charts of colour theory and thus another art-historical wink.
In 2004 Richter was appointed Professor of Painting at the Universität der Künste Berlin, and in 2006 he moved to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. His international presence remains as strong as ever. From December 2025 to February 2026, Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig devoted a comprehensive retrospective of 58 works to him, entitled TORF, on the occasion of his receiving the Art Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Business Community. It was the first major exhibition of his work in northern Germany in over 20 years. In 2025 Thaddaeus Ropac presented his new series Mit elben Birnen in Salzburg. The same year, Richter featured in the group exhibition Remix at the Albertina Modern in Vienna. In early summer 2026 GRIMM in Amsterdam followed with his sixth solo exhibition there, marking two decades of collaboration with the gallery. Further recent solo exhibitions took place at the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Space K in Seoul and the Museo Ateneo Veneto in Venice. In 2023 Oscar-winning director Pepe Danquart portrayed him in the documentary film Daniel Richter.
Specialist: Joëlle Romba
