Richters first contacts with modern art were in 1912 through the Blaue Reiter and in 1913 through the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon gallery Der Strum in Berlin In 1914 he was influenced by cubism He contributed to the periodical Die Aktion in Berlin His first exhibition was in Munich in 1916 and Die Aktion published as a special edition about him In the same year he was wounded and discharged from the army and went to Zürich and joined the Dada movement Richter believed that the artists duty was to be actively political opposing war and supporting the revolution His first abstract works were made in 1917 In 1918 he befriended Viking Eggeling and the two experimented together with film Richter was cofounder in 1919 of the Association of Revolutionary Artists at Zürich In the same year he created his first Prélude an orchestration of a theme developed in eleven drawings In 1920 he was a member of the November group in Berlin and contributed to the Dutch periodical De Stijl Throughout his career he claimed that his 1921 film Rhythmus 21 was the first abstract film ever created This claim is not true he was preceded by the Italian Futurist Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna between 1911 and 1912 as they report in the Futurist Manifesto of Cinema as well as by fellow German artist Walter Ruttmann who produced Lichtspiel Opus 1 in 1920 Nevertheless Richters film Rhythmus 21 is considered an important early abstract film Richter moved from Switzerland to the United States in 1940 and became an American citizen He taught in the Institute of Film Techniques at the City College of New York While living in New York City Richter directed two feature films Dreams That Money Can Buy 1947 and 8 x 8 A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements 1957 in collaboration with Max Ernst Jean Cocteau Paul Bowles Fernand Léger Alexander Calder Marcel Duchamp and others which was partially filmed on the lawn of his summer house in Southbury Connecticut In 1957 he finished a film entitled Dadascope with original poems and prose spoken by their creators After 1958 Richter spent parts of the year in Ascona and Connecticut and returned to painting In 1963 he directed the short film From the Circus to the Moon on the American artist Alexander Calder Richter died in Minusio Switzerland in 1976
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