James A. Richter American Painter

American, 1900-1982

James Richter is an underrecognized American painter who carefully documented the post war New York scene over a four-decade career.

He is a 1975 recipient of the Doris Kreindler memorial prize and visited with many of America's great painters working in his Manhattan lower west side neighborhood.

He was born to an immigrant family from Kiev, the Ukraine. Richter grew up in the Great Depression and moved to the Catskills in upstate New York where he was a farm hand. There he became an expert handyman and early electronics wizard, and served for 35 years as an engineer for the US Post Office at New York City’s Main Branch.

During that time, he also refined his considerable skills as a painter. Following World War II, he was influenced by well-known abstract expressionist artists in his neighborhood with whom he regularly socialized. He frequently traveled to Sicily and every summer to Provincetown, which had a flourishing artist community.

Painting became Richter’s full-time occupation after retirement, with work expressed through four distinct phases: realism in the 1940's, cubism in the 1950's, abstract in the 1960's, and impressionism in the 1970's. His final works of the 1980s are a synthesis of all four prior periods, and regarded as some of his best work.

A deeply humble man, Richter disdained sales and rarely released his paintings. The bulk of his opus is held by the James A. Richter Art Foundation in Sedona, Arizona.

Gallery

Exhibitions

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Inquiries:

Foundation President:

President@JamesARichterArtFoundation.org

Foundation Vice President:

VicePresident@JamesARichterArtFoundation.org

Foundation Assistant Vice President:

AssistantVicePresident@JamesARichterArtFoundation.org

Foundation Treasurer:

Treasurer@JamesARichterArtFoundation.org

Foundation Secretary:

Secretary@JamesARichterArtFoundation.org