Gerhard Richter grew up in the Third Reich and East Germany. In 1953 he began studying monumental painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden before fleeing to West Germany in 1961. With Sigmar Polke and Konrad Lueg he organized the exhibition Capitalist Realism in 1965. Richter became a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1971–1994). His work was shown at Documenta 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12. Spanning color-block painting, abstractions in gray and in colors mixed with a squeegee, paintings based on photographs, works in glass, his artworks have been shown in a vast number of exhibitions in museums worldwide. His work is owned by major international museums, and in 2012 a retrospective marking his eightieth birthday toured museums around the world.