Daniel Richter German, b. 1962

Daniel Richter emerged as a significant figure in contemporary art during the 1990s, following a formative period in the music industry where he designed posters and album covers for various bands. His early canvases were largely abstract, distinguished by intensely vibrant forms that oscillate between graffiti-like spontaneity and intricate ornamental structures. Around 2002, figurative elements began to appear, often drawn from reproductions found in newspapers or history books, rendered in vivid hues that imbue his compositions with a sense of heightened awareness and artificiality. In his most recent work, Richter navigates the boundary between figuration and abstraction, constructing chaotic assemblages of fragmented bodies set against simplified, chromatic backgrounds.

Richter’s practice is informed by the legacy of Symbolist painters such as James Ensor and Edvard Munch, synthesizing references from art history, mass media, and popular culture to generate idiosyncratic, surreal environments. While certain works may be interpreted through a political lens—addressing themes such as immigration or surveillance—they resist singular or reductive readings. The artist employs bold chromatic contrasts and abstracted patterning to evoke a disquieting emotional tenor, amplified by the temporal and spatial ambiguity of scenes that refuse conventional pictorial resolution. This is particularly evident in his contoured color fields, reminiscent of atlas maps yet unmoored from specific geographic referents. Richter describes these as “an encirclement, a sort of pressing, entwining, squeezing,” evoking a palpable sense of confrontation, flux, and the unresolved tensions of the human experience.