Gerhard Richter’s window

Gerhard Richter’s window (Corinna Belz, German with English and French subtitles)

Cathedral window was designed for the south transept of Cologne cathedral. The work, which consists of approximately 11,500 squares of glass in 72 colours, was unveiled in 2007. Some of the brightly coloured square panes were arranged randomly, while others were selected in response to the architectural context. The design is based on 4096 colours (cr: 359) from 1974.

A documentary film about Richter’s cologne cathedral window by Corinna Belz was released in 2007 in association with the Staatliche kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Gerhard Richter archiv. The documentary was made over a period of two years, following the many stages of the project’s development, from the creation of glass samples based on medieval recipes to the computer generation of numerous random sequences, from the approval of the designs to the unveiling of the final window. Featuring a variety of interviews, including with dr. Barbara Schock-Werner, architect of Cologne cathedral, Günter Hettinger, stained glass restorer at the cathedral workshop, cologne, programmer Klaus Hagemeister, and Gerhard Richter himself, Belz’s film offers considerable insight into the process of undertaking this major commission.