Hans Richter

Richter was born in Berlin into a prosperous Jewish family, one of six children. Richter began to draw in his early high school days, producing several portraits of his schoolmates as well as sketches from nature and urban life. By 1913, Richter had entered the avant-garde circles of the Berlin art world, particularly through his friendship with Herwarth Walden, editor of the seminal journal Der Sturm, as well as director of the Sturm Gallery, where Richter saw the latest Futurist and Cubist paintings and works by Expressionists such as Ernst Kirchner and Wassily Kandinsky. 

Richter plunged into this new movement, contributing to Dada shows and publications, and creating iconic Dada works such as the Visionary Portraits (1917) and Dada Köpfe (Dada Heads, 1918). Richter believed in the artist's power to shape political and social ideas, but it needed a universal language that could be understood by all - the language of abstraction. From Zürich he continued to contribute to Die Aktion but also to new ventures such as the Dutch periodical De Stijl, edited by Theo van Doesburg.