Early Career
In the early days of his career, he prepared a wall painting ("Communion with Picasso", 1955) for the refectory of this Academy of Arts as part of his B.A. Another mural followed at the Hygiene-Museum (German Hygiene Museum) entitled "Lebensfreude" ("Joy of life"), for his diploma and intended to produce an effect "similar to that of wall paper or tapestry".
Both paintings were painted over for ideological reasons after Richter escaped from East to West Germany (two months before the building of the Berlin Wall); after German reunification two "windows" of the wall painting Joy of life (1956) were uncovered in the stairway of the German Hygiene Museum, but these were later covered over when it was decided to restore the Museum to its original 1930 state. From 1957 to 1961 Richter worked as a master trainee in the academy and took orders for the former state of the GDR. During this time, he worked intensively on murals (Arbeiterkampf, which means Worker fight), on oil paintings (e.g. portraits of the East German actress Angelica Domroese and of Richter's first wife Ema), on various self portraits and furthermore, on a panorama of Dresden with the neutral name Stadtbild (Townscape, 1956).
When he escaped to West Germany, Richter began to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Karl Otto Götz. With Polke and Lueg he introduced the term Kapitalistischer Realismus (Capitalistic Realism) as an anti-style of art, appropriating the pictorial shorthand of advertising. This title also referred to the realist style of art known as Socialist Realism, then the official art doctrine of the Soviet Union, but it also commented upon the consumer-driven art doctrine of western capitalism. Later, Lueg founded the gallery Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf.
Richter taught at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, as a visiting professor, and returned to the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1971, where he was a professor for over 15 years.
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