Gerhard Richter
German artist, born 1932
"Gerhard Richter is a German visual artist who has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction. Richter created various paintings from photographs with his hallmark ""blur"", which is achieved sometimes with a light touch of a soft brush, sometimes a hard smear by an aggressive pull with a squeegee (""Helga Matura"", ""Cityscape Madrid"", ""Lesende"" etc.). For ""Forty-eight Portraits"" he chose mainly the faces of composers such as Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius, and of writers such as H. G. Wells and Franz Kafka."
Source: Wikipedia