information:extraction
Church windows

In 2002, the same year as his MoMA retrospective, Richter was asked to design a stained glass window in the Cologne Cathedral.In August 2007, his window was unveiled. It is an 113 square metres (1,220 sq ft) abstract collage of 11,500 pixel -like squares in 72 colors, randomly arranged by computer (with some symmetry), reminiscent of his 1974 painting 4096 colours. The artist waived any fee, and the costs of materials and mounting the window came to around €370,000 ($506,000), covered by donations from more than 1,000 people. Cardinal Joachim Meisner did not attend the window's unveiling as he would have preferred it to have been a figurative representation of 20th century Christian martyrs and said that Richter's window would fit better in a mosque or other prayer house. A professed atheist with "a strong leaning towards Catholicism", Richter had his three children with his third wife baptized in the Cologne Cathedral.

In September 2020, Richter unveiled his three 30-foot-tall stained-glass windows for the Tholey Abbey, one of the oldest monasteries in Germany. He called them his last major work, adding that he would focus on drawings and sketches from then on. The large choir windows were made by Gustva van Treeck, an esteemed glass workshop in nearby Munich. They are abstract painted works inspired by his "Pattern" series from the 1990s. An additional 34 figurative stained glass windows designed for the abbey by Afghan-German Muslim artist Mahbuba Maqsoodi are expected to be completed by Easter 2021. The monks of the abbey hoped the windows would promote tourism to the abbey and its town and bring people into the faith.