RICHTER, DANIEL
1962 Eutin

Title: "Wenn wer dt. Meister oder wer wird deutscher Meister".
Date: 1999.
Technique: Spray paint, varnish and oil on canvas.
Measurement: 220 x 180 cm.
Notation: Signed, dated and titled verso upper left: D. Richter 99 'Wenn wer dt. Meister oder wer wird deutscher Meister'.
Frame: Framed.



Provenance:
- - Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (labels and stamps)

- Private collection (acquired from the previous owner in 1999)

- Christie’s, New York, auction 17.5.2024, lot 385

- Private collection, Lower Saxony


Exhibition:
- Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin 1999

- Deitch Projects, New York 1999

- Denver Art Museum, Denver 2008/09


Literature:
- Meyer-Hermann, Eva (ed.): Daniel Richter – Works from the Early Years to the Present Day, Berlin 2023, p. 74



- A dense, dynamic composition in the artist’s characteristic large format

- One of only four abstract black-and-white paintings by Richter

- Part of the exhibition ‘Mozart on Television: New Painting from Germany’ in New York in 1999, and thus one of the artist’s first international exhibitions



The Punk of Contemporary Painting

Daniel Richter, born in 1962, grew up in Eutin, a small town in Schleswig-Holstein with approximately 5,000 inhabitants. Even within this provincial setting, Richter found like-minded companions in the painter Willy Knoop and the musician Rocko Schamoni, with whom he forged his first political alliances. In the 1980s, Richter moved to Hamburg and became part of the left-wing autonomous movement. During this period, he designed posters and record covers for punk bands.

In 1991, at the age of twenty-nine, Richter decided to study at the Hochschule für bildende Kunst in Hamburg under Werner Büttner and Albert Oehlen, both of whom impressed upon him the importance of continually questioning and redefining one’s own artistic understanding. By the mid-1990s, Richter had grown weary of academic study and embarked fully on his artistic career. Success came quickly: in 2002, he was honored with his first solo exhibition at the K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, followed in 2007 by his first retrospective at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Since 2006, he has held a professorship in fine arts in Vienna, where he has since profoundly influenced younger generations of artists.



Breaking Expectations

The painting Wenn wer dt. Meister oder wer wird deutscher Meister (If Someone Becomes German Champion or Who Will Become German Champion) from 1999 occupies an exceptional position within Richter’s oeuvre. It belongs to a series of only four paintings executed almost entirely in shades of black and white.

“On the occasion of this excursion into black and white, the painter asked himself whether ‘penetrance, intrusiveness, and overload are merely a matter of color,’ and discovered that this also ‘works’ in black and white.”

(quoted in Eva Meyer-Hermann, Daniel Richter. Bilder von früh bis heute, Berlin 2023, p. 74)

At a time when Richter was primarily known for his overwhelming explosions of color, he consciously played with—and inverted—the expectations attached to his work. Only in a few isolated areas do traces of pale blue, violet, and turquoise emerge, lending the painting a subtle multidimensionality. This constant renewal and reinvention—particularly at moments when he appears to stand at the height of success—would become a recurring pattern throughout Richter’s career.

Using spray paint, lacquer, and oil, Richter constructs a dense web of lines, curves, smears, and ornamental structures. Marks and areas of pigment condense into an organic network that imposes an underlying order upon apparent chaos. The restless movement of forms, spiral vortices, and sweeping curves—combined with the monumental scale of the work—immerses the viewer in an almost intoxicating, psychedelic state. A surreal, playful space emerges, one that nonetheless consistently adheres to an internal order. The canvas unfolds before the viewer in ever-deeper layers, opening new levels of meaning and association the longer one contemplates it.



Irony, Competition, and Self-Renewal

The title of the work likewise invites interpretation. Wenn wer dt. Meister oder wer wird deutscher Meister may be read as an ironic commentary on sports and entertainment culture, but equally as a critical interrogation of the art world itself: What constitutes art, what determines its value, and who deserves recognition?

The work documents an artist at the height of his abstract phase and simultaneously at a threshold. At the very moment when his chromatic explosions seemed nearly impossible to surpass, Richter opted for a radical break, almost entirely reversing his palette and exploring new approaches to pictorial construction. This untamable drive toward self-renewal has continued to define Richter and contributes to his status as one of Germany’s most successful contemporary artists.

Sophie Ballermann



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