“Born in Dresden and trained in communist east Germany, Mr Richter is often lauded for injecting new life in painting, a seemingly tired art form. He is an odd champion for the medium: though we expect painting to be easier to read and understand than, say, an animal preserved in aspic or a performance piece involving nudity and a skeleton, Mr Richter subverts our expectations. His paintings call into question the very idea of painting. As Kenneth Baker wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mr Richter gives viewers “an uncomfortable sense of spying on one man’s analytical obsession with how painting works.” ”

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2010/09/art_new_york.