ART CITIES: Salzburg-Daniel Richter
The German artist Daniel Richter first came to prominence in the 1990s when he transitioned into fine art from the world of music, where he began his career designing posters and record sleeves for bands. His early paintings were abstract, characterised by intensely colorful forms that lie somewhere between graffiti and intricate ornamentation. Figures began appearing in his works around 2002, often inspired by reproductions from newspapers or history books and rendered in bright colors that create an atmosphere of heightened awareness and artificiality.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery Archive
Over the course of the past year, Daniel Richter has developed a powerful new body of large-scale paintings for his solo exhibition “Mit elben Birnen”, in which he continues his exploration of the uneasy terrain between figuration and abstraction. These dynamic works are dominated by chaotic constellations of fragmented, creature-like figures that seem to twist and collide within turbulent visual fields. Saturated with sharp contrasts and vivid color, they radiate a sense of raw, rebellious energy—an electric charge coursing through every corner of the canvas. Richter’s artistic trajectory has been defined by continuous formal reinvention, and this latest series marks yet another shift in his visual language. In contrast to the heavy monochrome blocks and opaque surfaces that characterized much of his recent output, these new compositions are marked by ruptured, incandescent backgrounds—torn, scorched, or smudged as if burned by inner heat. At times, the psychedelic, candy-colored forms are sharply outlined by dense black contours, creating a sense of speed or violence; elsewhere, they float untethered, exploding across the pictorial space with centrifugal force. Richter often leaves the trace of his physical presence on the canvas—fingermarks and gestural smears that lend a visceral, tactile immediacy to the works, intensifying their primal energy and emotional volatility. “My paintings are built on confrontation,” Richter notes. “On pushing and pulling—elements clashing, pressing, mingling.” That tension animates the works throughout the show: the tension between order and chaos, figure and ground, beauty and aggression. There is no stable perspective, no clear narrative or setting. The compositions unfold in ambiguous, dreamlike realms—mental landscapes untethered from any specific time or place. Bold chromatic juxtapositions pulse with emotional charge, invoking the fractured intensity of Clyfford Still’s abstraction, yet Richter’s works remain grounded in a distinctive, personal iconography of rupture and transformation. Despite the violence and dissonance, the paintings also offer moments of strange, almost aching sensuality. Their lush surfaces, tactile details, and baroque palette suggest a fragile, wounded beauty—an aesthetic push-pull that mirrors the psychological complexity at the core of Richter’s practice. The exhibition’s title, “Mit elben Birnen”, is a cryptic play on the opening line of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem “Half of Life”, a haunting meditation on the duality between idyllic fullness and existential emptiness. Richter’s altered version of the line introduces ambiguity, resisting interpretation while echoing the poem’s prophetic tone—a tone that resonates eerily with contemporary social and political disquiet. Hölderlin’s image of creaking weathervanes, ominously turning in uncertain winds, becomes a poignant metaphor for the fractured, unstable state of the world—a mood that permeates Richter’s recent work. This existential unease is often laced with the artist’s signature anarchic wit. His absurdist, sometimes sardonic titles reflect a punk-inflected sensibility shaped by his deep ties to Hamburg’s underground music and art scene. The city, where Richter studied under Werner Büttner in the early 1990s, has been both a crucible and a constant—serving as the cultural backdrop to his development and the launchpad for a career that has made him one of the defining voices in contemporary German painting.
Photo left: Daniel Richter, Angst, mein BROT, 2024m Oil on canvas, 220 × 165 cm (86.61 × 64.96 in), © Daniel Richter, Courtesy the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery. Photo right: Daniel Richter, Angst, mein FUN, WOHIN, 2024, Oil on canvas, 230 × 170 cm (86.61 × 64.96 in), © Daniel Richter, Courtesy the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery
Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Salzburg Villa Kast, Mirabellplatz 2, Salzburg, Austria, Duration: 25/7-27/9/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://ropac.net/
