Gerhard Richter Painting

Gerhard Richter Painting
Director
Corinna Belz
Country
Germany
Year
2011
Genre
Documentary
http://www.gerhardrichterpainting.com/#/the-film/

Storyline

One of the world’s greatest living painters, the German artist Gerhard Richter has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. Infamously media-shy, he agreed to appear on camera for the first time in 15 years for a 2007 short by filmmaker Corinna Belz called Gerhard Richter’s Window.

Her follow-up, Gerhard Richter Painting, is exactly that: a thrilling document of Richter’s creative process, juxtaposed with intimate conversations (with his critics, his collaborators, and his American gallerist Marian Goodman) and rare archive material. From our fly-on-the-wall perspective, we watch the 79-year-old create a series of large-scale abstract canvasses, using fat brushes and a massive squeegee to apply (and then scrape off) layer after layer of brightly colored paint. This mesmerizing footage, of a highly charged process of creation and destruction, turns Belz’s portrait of an artist into a work of art itself.

Festivals & Academy awards and others

Toronto International Film Festival

Deutscher Filmpreis (Lolas) 2012
Best documentary film

Releases

France (6 of June 2012)
United States (14 of March 2012)
United kingdom (23 of September 2011)
Canada (10 of September 2011)
Germany (8 of September 2011)