Top 15 Gerhard Richter Quotes

I have always been structured. What has changed is the proportions. Now it is eight hours of paperwork and one of painting.

It’s our culture, Christian history, that’s what formed me. Even as an atheist, I believe. We’re just built that way.

I have painted my family so frequently because they are the one who really affect me the most.

Art should be serious, not a joke. I don’t like to laugh about art.

Politicians are nauseating by definition… They can produce nothing, neither a loaf of bread nor a table nor a picture; and this inability to create value, this total inferiority, makes them jealous, vengeful, insolent and a menace to life and limb.

I am ridiculously old-fashioned.

A father draws boundaries and calls a halt, whenever necessary. As I didn’t have that, I was able to stay childishly naive that much longer – so I did what I liked, because there was nobody stopping me, even when I got it wrong.

I believe in painting and I believe in eating too. What can we do? We have to eat, we have to paint, we have to live. Of course, there are different ways to survive. But it’s my best option.

I’m still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.

I can’t paint as well as Vermeer.

Every museum is full of nice things. That’s the opposite of before. It was important things or serious things. Now we have interesting things.

I don’t think I can do this – painting under observation. It’s the worst thing there is, worse than being in the hospital.

Weeks go by, and I don’t paint until finally I can’t stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don’t want to talk about it, because I don’t want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself.

Chance determines our lives in important ways.

Good art in general aspires to something, as a good painting aspires to something, almost spiritual or holy.