October 18, 1977

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October 18, 1977

1988

by Gerhard Richter

In a 1988 series of fifteen ambiguous photo paintings entitled October 18, 1977 Gerhard Richter depicted four members of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a German left-wing terrorist organization. These paintings were created from black-and-white newspaper and police photos. Three RAF members were found dead in their prison cells on October 18, 1977, and the cause of their deaths was the focus of widespread controversy. Gerhard Richter: "The deaths of terrorists, and the related events both before and after, stand for a horror that distressed me and has haunted me as unfinished business ever since, despite all my efforts to suppress it."