Following screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and Art Basel Miami Beach, Corinna Belz’s documentary portrait Gerhard Richter Painting will have its US theatrical premiere on Wednesday, March 14 at Film Forum. The film will play from March 14–27, with screenings daily at 1:15, 3:15, 6:00, 8:00, and 10:00.
Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art, author of Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, and Senior Curator of MoMA’s 2001 Richter retrospective, will introduce the 8:00 show on opening night, March 14.
One of the world’s greatest living painters, 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 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.
“A must-see for followers of contemporary painting…one of the most important living painters shows how he does it.”—John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter
“A gorgeously rendered work of art. Offers fascinating insight…and a mesmerizing survey of [Richter's] complete oeuvre.”—Alissa Simon, Variety
For press inquiries, please contact Rodrigo Brandão at rodrigo@kinolorber.com
Official site: gerhardrichterpainting.com
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