He is considered one of the most important contemporary painters and “saved painting in the 21st century” (Süddeutsche Zeitung): Gerhard Richter, born in 1932 in Dresden, was trained at the Academy of Fine Arts there, and, after escaping to West Germany, at the National Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf. Since then, Richter has received numerous international awards, and his exhibitions have been celebrated around the world. The filmmaker Corinna Belz was able to observe the artist during his daily work in the studio; she documents the creative process of several paintings – up to the gallery opening in New York. With her sensitive curiosity she has created a unique documentary, far removed from all traditional portraits of artists, some of which are more academic than others.

In Gerhard Richter’s “Hahnwald” studio in Cologne, the painter is grappling with a fiddly tripod. He then sets up the camera, focusing on one work which has been painted over in grey. He refines a second painting with a palette knife. His employees photograph the works of their master. “Will it stay that way?” the filmmaker asks from off-screen. “I assume so,” answers one of the assistants. But it isn’t certain. From the very outset it’s clear that the creative process behind Richter’s works, which all seem so spontaneous and haphazard, is actually the result of a lengthy process of searching and experimentation. The painter points to two paintings: “They would have changed,” he explains. “I would have set them up completely differently!”

The way in which he prepares for exhibitions also reveals Richter’s meticulousness. In his studio, he set up mini-models of the galleries in which his paintings are to be displayed: the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. They are like dollhouses, in which he uses small photos to test out how his works will be arranged in the respective rooms.

Among the film’s highlights are the sequences documenting the near-simultaneous creation of two abstract paintings. Two stepladders have been placed in front of two large canvases; Richter begins applying yellow paint with a palette knife, before painting over it in blue and red. The colours, still wet, begin to blend; various shades, shadows and patterns develop. Richter goes from the first canvas to the second and back, repeatedly applying new paint and scraping away some of the old. He isn’t satisfied, but he smiles and confesses: “It’s difficult!” Then he adds: “You need to find a way – free and enjoyable, but the pictures still have to be good!” He worries that the paintings might “not last”. He likes the second one better. “Why?” one hears the filmmaker asking from the background. She doesn’t appear on camera once from beginning to end. “The second is more open, more carefree,” explains the master. His answer is instinctively, or intuitively, logical, making it one of the most marvellous moments of the film. Corinna Belz’s questions are not “academic”, and she never disturbs Richter while painting. The viewer senses how much mutual trust the film has built up – up to the moment in which Richter explains that he could never see his parents again after fleeing the GDR. He tries to smile – but one sees how much this “confession” affects him.

Many of today’s digitally-shot documentary films suffer from a profound lack of structure; the material inside the camera costs practically nothing anymore, so endless hours of footage are shot, until the editing process can no longer handle the abundance of recorded images. Corinna Belz has also overcome this problem with confidence. Her film has a wonderfully clear structure. It includes excerpts from historic TV interviews (1966, 1969, 1976) with Gerhard Richter, but also recurring tracking shots, running parallel to the walls of Richter’s studio, which display his paintings and photos. The short opening-night sequences filmed from Cologne and Paris to London and New York are structural elements of the film – though they never just serve as interludes, but also shed light on Gerhard Richter, who isn’t comfortable when having to appear before numerous members of the in-crowd. He seems shy, but never arrogant. He is fully conscious of the problem of verbally explaining his painting, for: “Painting is a different form of thinking.” And he confesses his unease at the presence of the camera; he feels observed, as for him, painting is a “secret matter”. The only drawback of the film is that viewers just get a fleeting glance of Richter’s earlier, representational paintings, on the occasion of his portrait exhibition in London. At the end, one sees him once again in front of an enormous, white-grey canvas. The artist, who seems to be doing heavy physical work with his palette knife, suddenly seems like a kind of Sisyphus. Unexpectedly, yellow traces of colour emerge from the white-grey. Richter tells us: “Wow, this is a lot of fun!”

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

2009-2011

Production Year

2011

color

color

Aspect Ratio

1:1,85

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Documentary

Genre

Biography / Portrait

Topic

Visual Arts / Design / Photography

Available Media

35mm, DVD

Original Version

English (en), German (de)

35mm

DVD

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil)