Top 15 highest-selling artists in 2011
- By Zhang Junmian
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E-mail China.org.cn, February 3, 2012
Gerhard Richter 格哈德•里希特
2011 Rank:8 Auction Revenue:US$175.67 million
2010 Rank:16 Auction Revenue:US$67.03 million
Gerhard Richter, born in Dresden, Saxony in 1932, is a German visual artist widely recognized as an important artist in the 20th and 21st centuries. The artist is best-known for changing his painting styles and subjects all the time in the past 50 years, which challenges the concept that an artist should consistently adhere to a certain style.
Richter, first trained in a realistic style at the Kunstakademie in Dresden, East Germany from 1952 to 1956, later entered West Germany and studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf from 1961 to 1963. It was where he began to produce his photo-based paintings as a response to his fascination in the relations between painting and photographic sources. His works, switching between abstraction and realism, present how images believed to carry the truth can be far from being objective.
The artist has always been a favorite in auction houses. His 1982 Kerze (Candle) fetched £10.5 million (US$16.6 million) at Christie's London in Oct. 2011, a new record for him.
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