Gerhard Richter was born on February 9, 1932 in the East German town of Dresden, whose culture and charm were obliterated by the war. He grew up in the nearby village of Oberlausitz where his father was a schoolteacher. He was a gifted child artistically, but not a good student. As a young man he earned a living making posters and set designs and from 1952-56 he studied Socialist Realism, the official school of painting in East Germany, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. A few years later he was to receive another, very different education, from Karl Otto Gotz, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dusseldorf, in Abstract Expressionism. Richter's move to West Germany in 1961 occurred only two months before the Be...