# Hans Richter [Wikipedia Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Richter_(artist)) ( 1888 – 1976 ) ## Description German painter and filmmaker who moved from Dada into abstract "absolute film," making *Rhythmus 21* (1921) — among the earliest abstract films, developed out of scroll-format abstract paintings — before later directing the surrealist feature *Dreams That Money Can Buy* (1947) and writing the influential history *Dada: Art and Anti-Art* (1965). ## Key Tags #absolute-film #visual-music #dada #german-avant-garde ## Essential Works - *Rhythmus 21* (1921) - one of the earliest abstract films, animating rectangles in rhythmic black-white-gray sequences, developed from his earlier scroll paintings - *Dreams That Money Can Buy* (1947) - surrealist feature film with episodes by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, and Max Ernst - *Dada: Art and Anti-Art* (1965, book) - Richter's own history of the movement he helped found ## Details Originally a Cubist and Dada painter in Zurich and Berlin, Richter developed abstract scroll paintings with Viking Eggeling before translating that language into film, becoming a founding figure of "absolute film" alongside Walter Ruttmann and Eggeling. Emigrated to the United States in 1941, taught at City College of New York, and became one of the first historians of his own movement. ### Concepts and Theories %% none yet %% ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Collaborators - [[Walter Ruttmann]] - fellow founder of the German "absolute film" movement; both exhibited abstract scroll/rhythm films in the same Berlin avant-garde programs of the early 1920s - [[Germaine Dulac]] - contemporary in the international 1920s "pure cinema" avant-garde ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements %% none yet %% ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Richter, Hans. *Dada: Art and Anti-Art*. Thames & Hudson, 1965. Richter's own critical history of the Dada movement he helped found. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography Foster, Stephen C., editor. *Hans Richter: Activism, Modernism, and the Avant-Garde*. MIT Press, 1998. Critical essays on Richter's career across Dada, absolute film, and postwar teaching.