Gerhard Richter, one of the internationally most significant contemporary artists of our times, granted filmmaker Corinna Belz access to his studio in the spring and summer of 2009 while he was working on a series of large abstract paintings. Gerhard Richter Painting offers us rare insights into the artist’s work. In quiet, highly concentrated images, the film gives us a fly-on-the-wall perspective of a very personal, tension-filled process of artistic creation. We see Richter painting. We see him observe and dialogue with his paintings. We see him contemplate, wait, reject, rework and sometimes destroy only to begin anew.

GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING is the penetrating portrait of an artist at work – and a fascinating film about the art of seeing.

3 day rental • NR • 108 min. • German with subtitles

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"An unshowy but important art doc that will be a must-see for followers of contemporary painting, Corinna Belz's Gerhard Richter Painting opens a window on artworks whose creation proves even more time- and thought-intensive than expected.”
— Hollywood Reporter

"Corinna Belz’s feat of managing to stay close to the artist over a period of three years, particularly through five months in 2009 while he was putting together the works he was about to exhibit later that year in New York, is something of a record that is bound to draw the attention of the art world everywhere to the film... the film’s main and quite unique achievement, is entering Richter’s studio, to watch the man at work, for the process which leads to the creation is, in his case, as fascinating as the finished work itself and Belz’s camera allows to discover that other essential aspect of Richter’s genius... it’s a stunning experience to see them radically transforming before one’s eyes with one swish of that famous squeegee. Both director and painter are of course conscious that the presence of a strange person and a camera affects what is essentially a very secret, intimate and personal act of creation."
— Screen International

"A gorgeously rendered work of art… An art film in the literal sense, German helmer Corinna Belz's intelligently assembled observational docu "Gerhard Richter Painting" offers fascinating insight into the working process of the famed contemporary artist as he prepares a series of abstract canvases.”
— Variety