Ema on the Staircase

In her third film about Gerhard Richter, Corinna Belz begins with the meticulous restauration of one the artist’s most famous paintings, “Ema, Akt auf einer Treppe”, painted in 1966 and housed in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, offering viewers an even closer look at the great master’s refined painting technique and reconstructing a particularly significant moment in his life. After having examined Richter’s most recent work, the director takes us back to the artist’s first active years in Düsseldorf, under Marcel Duchamp’s influence; narrated by skilfully linking photos and archival film footage with commentary by Nicholas Serota, director of London’s Tate Gallery, and by art historian Benjamin Buchloh, shot in Richter’s current studio during preparations for his retrospective, “Panorama”.