SFX: Thin, slightly fractured music that seems on the verge of disintegrating altogether. Maybe Schnittke? 

NARRATOR:  

This painting looks like a cityscape, but is it perhaps the ruins of a city? Curator Rachel Jans.  

SFX: The subtle but ominous groaning of a building that’s shifting on its foundations. A wind– as if we’re on a high ledge looking down over this cityscape. Music under. 

RACHEL JANS: 

Instability or uncertainty is a continual theme throughout his work. But it’s always paired with its opposite, its other side. You know, we see that in Cityscape Madrid, which appears to fall apart when you step forward. And if you step away, it resolves into a more stable picture of a city. 

SFX: The building groans. The music builds, and then resolves for a moment. 

JANS:  

For Richter and for his peers there was a certain distrust of this kind of stability that was emerging in West Germany, precisely because they had recently experienced so much devastation, not just from WWII but also with the division of Germany and the Cold War – and the way that separated families and created two worlds side by side. East Germany and West Germany.  

SFX: The music totally falls apart, trailing off in disparate fragments.