Daniel Richter "Kunst kommt von Kopieren"

Daniel Richter grew up in Hamburg's punk and squatter scene; he was almost 30 when he began his art studies, learning to think and see freely from his mentor Werner Büttner. Soon he was designing record covers for befriended bands like Die Goldenen Zitronen and Chicks on Speed, he founded a label, stayed on the fine line between abstract and figurative painting and experimented with narrative images and the sensory excitement potentials of intense colouring. And at some point, partly due to the constant further development he prescribed for himself, he became one of the great figures of contemporary painting. In the meantime, some of his large-format paintings go for seven-figure sums.

The film ‘Daniel Richter’ (director: Pepe Danquart, theatrical release in Austria: 5 May) now penetrates deeply, if not very structuredly, into the cosmos of this artist and focuses on the details of his work: it documents Richter's world views, his mistrust of the art trade, for example, and also has a number of his companions appear along the way, such as the artists Jonathan Meese and Tal R. Richter makes art that is as original as it is anti-authoritarian, with a spirit of resistance and a big mouth: punk by other means.