Richard Georg Gutekunst was born in Stuttgart on 24 June 1870, the son of Heinrich Gottlob Gutekunst. Together with his cousin, Alfred Stroelin (1871-1954), who later also worked in the art trade, he completed an apprenticeship at the ‘Papier- und Kunsthandlung Schaller’ in his native Stuttgart. His older brother Otto Carl Heinrich (1865-1947), who was also active in the art trade, finally took him to London in 1890.
After his first few years in London, he returned to Stuttgart temporarily in 1893, primarily with the aim of gaining further training at important German print cabinets. Thanks to the knowledge he had acquired, he helped catalogue the Luigi Angiolini collection from Milan for the first time, the auction of which was to be a great success in May 1895.
Equipped with this knowledge, Richard opened his own shop in London in May 1895, first in St James at 16 King Street, later in Mayfair at 10 Grafton Street. Richard quickly established himself and became a member of the Royal Society of Arts.
When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Richard was on holiday in Switzerland with his family. As a German and therefore suddenly an ‘enemy’, he was unable to return to London. His only option was to move to Stuttgart and later work for F. A. C. Prestel in Frankfurt am Main. And it got even worse: his company and private collection were confiscated as enemy property and auctioned off in a small auction house under the title ‘By order of the Public Trustee - Trading with the Enemy - R. Gutekunst’ at the beginning of December 1920.
While cataloguing the Goldschmidt auctions at F. A. C. Prestel in Frankfurt in 1917, he met and came to appreciate August Klipstein (1885-1951). Klipstein was married to Frieda Jaeggi from Bern. The two decided to found a company together and relocate their art dealing activities to Switzerland, more precisely to Bern. The company ‘Gutekunst und Klipstein’ was entered in the commercial register there in 1919. The first premises were opened in 1920 at Hotelgasse 8 near the Zeitglockenturm in Bern. The company limited itself to trading and organising exhibitions.
Gutekunst retired from business life in 1928 and left the company to his partner Klipstein. Richard died in Riehen near Basel in 1961 at the advanced age of over 90.