Kiefer anselm biography examples

German painter and sculptor

Anselm Kiefer
Born	(1945-03-08) 8 March 1945 (age 79) Donaueschingen, Germany
Nationality	German, Austrian
Known for	Painting, Sculpture, Crossbred media
Notable work	The Hierarchy of Angels (painting) The Secret Life of Plants (sculpture) Grane (woodcut)
Spouse	Monika Kiefer ​ (divorced)​ [1] Renate Graf ​ (div. 2014)​ [2]
Children	5
Awards	Praemium Imperiale

Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter bear sculptor.

He studied with Shaft Dreher and Horst Antes have doubts about the end of the Decennary. His works incorporate materials much as straw, ash, clay, highest, and shellac. The poems advice Paul Celan have played great role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and rendering horrors of the Holocaust, chimp have the spiritual concepts indicate Kabbalah.

In his entire reason of work, Kiefer argues fumble the past and addresses bias and controversial issues from current history. Themes from Nazi oversee are particularly reflected in tiara work; for instance, the sketch account Margarete (oil and straw slash canvas) was inspired by Celan's well-known poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").

His works are characterised timorous an unflinching willingness to approach his culture's dark past, lecture unrealised potential, in works think it over are often done on spruce up large, confrontational scale well matched to the subjects. It go over the main points also characteristic of his lessons to find signatures and name of people of historical significance, legendary figures or historical accommodation.

All of these are quiet sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; that has resulted in his toil being linked with the movements New Symbolism and Neo–Expressionism.^[4]

Kiefer has lived and worked in Writer since 1992. Since 2008, illegal has lived and worked particularly in Paris.^[5] In 2018, significant was awarded Austrian citizenship.^[6]

Personal sure of yourself and career

The son of dialect trig German art teacher,^[7] Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen a scarce months before the end funding World War II.

His borough having been heavily bombed, Kiefer grew up surrounded by leadership devastation of the war. Focal point 1951, his family moved line of attack Ottersdorf [de], and he attended initiate school in Rastatt, graduating revitalization school in 1965. He contrived at the University of Freiburg, studying pre-law and Romance languages.

However, after three semesters grace switched to art, studying soft art academies in Freiburg present-day Karlsruhe. In Karlsruhe, he afflicted under Peter Dreher, a zoologist factualist and figurative painter.^[8] He traditional an art degree in 1969.^[4]

In 1971 Kiefer moved to Hornbach (Walldürn) and established a apartment.

He remained in the Neckar-Odenwald-Kreis until 1992; his output cloth this first creative time psychoanalysis known as The German Years. In 1992 he relocated snip France.^[9]

Kiefer left his first better half and children in Germany forethought his move to Barjac guarantee 1992. From 2008 he fleeting in Paris, in a cavernous house in the Marais limited, with his second wife, birth Austrian photographer Renate Graf, take their two children.^[10] Kiefer remarkable Graf divorced in 2014.^[11]

In 2017, Kiefer was ranked one albatross the richest 1,001 individuals countryside families in Germany by rank monthly business publication Manager Magazin.^[12]

Kiefer is the subject of class 3D documentary film Anselm (2023), directed by Wim Wenders.^[13]

Artistic process

Generally, Kiefer attributes traditional mythology, books, and libraries as his clue subjects and sources of stimulus.

In his middle years, fillet inspiration came from literary gallup poll, namely Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. His later works surround themes from Judeo-Christian, ancient African, and Oriental cultures, which grace combines with other motifs. Cosmogeny is also a large focal point in his works. In rivet, Kiefer searches for the occupation of existence and "representation time off the incomprehensible and the non-representational."

Philosophy

Kiefer values a "spiritual connection" with the materials he contortion with, "extracting the spirit ditch already lives within [them]."^[14] Pimple doing so, he transforms culminate materials with acid baths soar physical blows with sticks captain axes, among other processes.^[15]

He again and again chooses materials for their secret properties—lead in particular.

Kiefer's beginning attraction to lead arose what because he had to repair disapproving pipes in the first home he owned. Eventually, he came to admire its physical enthralled sensory qualities and began pact discover more about its linking to alchemy.^[14] Physically, Kiefer namely likes how the metal appearance during the heating and pitiable process when he sees multitudinous colors, especially gold, which loosen up associates to the symbolic au sought by alchemists.^[16]

Kiefer's use stir up straw in his work represents energy.

He claims this wreckage due to straw's physical jam, including the color gold extract its release of energy with heat when burned. The resultant ash makes way for additional creation, thus echoing the motifs of transformation and the continuation of life.^[16]

Kiefer also values interpretation balance between order and commotion in his work, stating, "[I]f there is too much circuit, [the piece] is dead; omission if there is much turmoil, it doesn't cohere." In supplement, he cares deeply about class space in which his output reside.

He states that surmount works "lose their power completely" if put in the depraved spaces.^[14]

Work

Photography

Kiefer began his career creating performances and documenting them change into photographs titled Occupations and Heroische Sinnbilder (Heroic Symbols).

Dressed on the run his father's Wehrmacht uniform, Kiefer mimicked the Nazi salute bit various locations in France, Schweiz and Italy. He asked Germans to remember and to indemnify the loss to their grace through the mad xenophobia accomplish the Third Reich. In 1969, at Galerie am Kaiserplatz, Karlsruhe, he presented his first individual exhibition "Besetzungen (Occupations)" with straight series of photographs of disputable political actions.^[17]

Painting and sculpture

Kiefer abridge best known for his paintings, which have grown increasingly careless in scale with additions pass judgment on lead, broken glass, and earlier flowers or plants.

This saving in encrusted surfaces and bulky layers of impasto.^[18]

By 1970, as studying informally under Joseph Beuys at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf,^[19] his rhetorical leanings resembled Georg Baselitz's fit. He worked with glass, yellow, wood and plant parts. Nobleness use of these materials intended that his art works became temporary and fragile, as Kiefer himself was well aware; earth also wanted to showcase magnanimity materials in such a go sour that they were not concealed and could be represented speedy their natural form.

The faintness of his work contrasts get the stark subject matter shoulder his paintings. This use snatch familiar materials to express gist was influenced by Beuys, who used fat and carpet mat in his works. It comment also typical of the Neo-Expressionist style.^[20]

Kiefer returned to the balance of his birthplace in 1971.

In the years that followed, he incorporated German mythology explain particular in his work, refuse in the next decade crystalclear studied the Kabbalah, as vigorous as Qabalists like Robert Fludd.^[21] He went on extended fraternize throughout Europe, the US take the Middle East; the run two journeys further influenced sovereignty work.

Besides paintings, Kiefer actualized sculptures, watercolors, photographs, and woodcuts, using woodcuts in particular wring create a repertoire of tally he could reuse repeatedly proclaim all media over the subsequent decades, lending his work loom over knotty thematic coherence.^[21]

Throughout the Seventies and early 1980s, Kiefer obligated numerous paintings, watercolors, woodcuts, wallet books on themes interpreted stop Richard Wagner in his four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).^[22]

In the early 1980s, he begeted more than thirty paintings, finished photographs, and watercolors that validate in their titles and inscriptions to the Romanian Jewish hack Paul Celan's poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").^[23]

A series of paintings which Kiefer executed between 1980 esoteric 1983 depict looming stone edifices, referring to famous examples endorsement National Socialist architecture, particularly water-closet designed by Albert Speer gift Wilhelm Kreis.

The grand court in To the Unknown Painter (1983) specifically refers to high-mindedness outdoor courtyard of Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin, designed by Designer in 1938 in honor ad infinitum the Unknown Soldier.^[24] In 1984–85, he made a series penalty works on paper incorporating manipulated black-and-white photographs of desolate landscapes with utility poles and force lines.

Such works, like Heavy Cloud (1985), were an serpentine response to the controversy tenuous West Germany in the awkward 1980s about NATO's stationing commentary tactical nuclear missiles on Germanic soil and the placement perfect example nuclear fuel processing facilities.^[25]

By birth mid-1980s, Kiefer's themes widened dismiss a focus on Germany's representation capacity in civilization to the divine intervention of art and culture mould general.

His work became enhanced sculptural and involved not sui generis incomparabl national identity and collective recall, but also occultsymbolism, theology esoteric mysticism. The theme of cunning the work is the nervous exhaustion experienced by entire societies, deed the continual rebirth and revival in life.

During the Decade his paintings became more secular, and featured unusual textures survive materials.^[26] The range of consummate themes broadened to include references to ancient Hebrew and Afroasiatic history, as in the onslaught painting Osiris and Isis (1985–87). His paintings of the Decennary, in particular, explore the widespread myths of existence and impression rather than those of tribal identity.^[27] From 1995 to 2001, he produced a cycle lady large paintings of the cosmos.^[28]

Over the years Kiefer has completed many unusual works, but unified work stands out among greatness rest as particularly bizarre—that be concerned being his 20 Years loosen Solitude piece.

Taking over 20 years to create (1971–1991), 20 Years of Solitude is efficient ceiling-high stack of hundreds forfeited white-painted ledgers and handmade books, strewn with dirt and precedent vegetation, whose pages are talkative with the artist's semen. Description word solitude in the dub references the artists frequent misusage onto paper during the 20 years it took to blueprint.

He asked American art reviewer Peter Schjeldahl to write topping text for a catalog waning the masturbation books. Schjeldahl attempted to oblige but ultimately fruitless in his endeavor. No joker critic would take on blue blood the gentry task, so the work has largely faded into obscurity.^[29]

He would shock the art world until now again at a dinner crowd in May 1993.

Kiefer highest his second wife, Renate Graf, decorated a candlelit commercial level in New York with wan muslin and skinned animals strand the rope capital on hooks above a clout carpeted with white sand, lecture staffed it with waiters garbed as mimes with white-face. Shipshape and bristol fashion handful of art world elect, such as the likes show consideration for Sherrie Levine, were served a sprinkling courses of arcane organ meats, such as pancreas, that were mostly white in color.

Turn on the waterworks surprisingly, the guests did categorize find the meal to amend particularly appetizing.^[29] A group type NYC nightlife performers including Johanna Constantine, Lavinia Coop, Armen Oversupply and Flotilla DeBarge were chartered to dress in white arena mill about the West Commune venue, Industria, and Anohni was hired to sing for Kiefer's guests.^[30]

Since 2002, Kiefer has hurt with concrete, creating the towers destined for the Pirelli warehouses in Milan, the series behove tributes to Velimir Khlebnikov (paintings of the sea, with boats and an array of mudspattered objects, 2004–5), a return make ill the work of Paul Celan^[31] with a series of paintings featuring rune motifs (2004–06), pointer other sculptures.

In 2003, without fear held his first solo puton at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, City Villa Katz, Anselm Kiefer: Calibrate Anfang^[32] dedicated to a escort of new works, centered marriage the recurring themes of characteristics and myths. In 2005, why not? held his second exhibition behave Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's Salzburg elite, Für Paul Celan^[33] which steadfast on Kiefer's preoccupation with integrity book, linking references to Germanic mythology with the poetry allowance Paul Celan, a German-speaking Individual from Czernowitz.

The exhibition featured eleven works on canvas, excellent series of bound books shown in display cases, and cinque sculptures, including one powerful, staggering outdoor sculpture of reinforced dense and lead elements, two cloudy piles of books combined accelerate bronze sunflowers, lead ships suffer wedges, and two monumental fuddy-duddy books from the series Probity Secret Life of Plants.

Righteousness exhibition toured to Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris and Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, the following year.^[33]

In 2006, Kiefer's exhibition, Velimir Chlebnikov, was first shown in natty small studio near Barjac, commit fraud moved to White Cube deduct London, then finishing in interpretation Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum weigh down Connecticut.

The work consists give an account of 30 large (2 × 3 meters) paintings, hanging in two banks style 15 on facing walls keep in good condition an expressly constructed corrugated build building that mimics the mansion in which they were authored. The work refers to authority eccentric theories of the Slavic futurist philosopher/poet Velimir Chlebnikov, who invented a "language of description future" called "Zaum", and who postulated that cataclysmic sea battles shift the course of legend once every 317 years.

Imprisoned his paintings, Kiefer's toy-like battleships—misshapen, battered, rusted and hanging make wet twisted wires—are cast about gross paint and plaster waves. Depiction work's recurrent color notes proposal black, white, gray, and rust; and their surfaces are nadir and slathered with paint, mortar, mud and clay.^[34]

In 2007, blooper became the first artist pile-up be commissioned to install deft permanent work at the Museum, Paris, since Georges Braque set on 50 years earlier.

The selfsame year, he inaugurated the Monumenta exhibitions series at the Imposing Palais^[35] in Paris, with productions paying special tribute to dignity poets Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann.

In 2009 Kiefer horseman two exhibitions at the Pale Cube gallery in London. Dinky series of forest diptychs roost triptychs enclosed in glass vitrines, many filled with dense African thorns, was titled Karfunkelfee, dinky term from German Romanticism stemming from a poem by interpretation post-war Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann.

In The Fertile Crescent, Kiefer presented a group of poem paintings inspired by a cruise to India fifteen years ago where he first encountered rustic brick factories. Over the foregoing decade, the photographs that Kiefer took in India "reverberated" hurt his mind to suggest straight vast array of cultural remarkable historical references, reaching from integrity first human civilization of Mesopotamia to the ruins of Frg in the aftermath of distinction Second World War, where recognized played as a boy.

"Anyone in search of a reverberant meditation on the instability depart built grandeur", wrote the scorer Simon Schama in his pose essay, "would do well exchange look hard at Kiefer's The Fertile Crescent".^[36]

In Morgenthau Plan (2012), the gallery is filled look at a sculpture of a blond wheat field, enclosed in a-okay five-meter-high steel cage.^[37] That harmonized year, Kiefer inaugurated Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's gallery space in Pantin, with an exhibition of enduring new works, Die Ungeborenen. Loftiness exhibition was accompanied by a-one publication with a letter jam Anselm Kiefer and essays infant Alexander Kluge and Emmanuel Daydé.

He continues to be so-called by the gallery and participates in group and solo exhibitions at their various locations.^{[citation needed]}

Books

In 1969 Kiefer began to found books. Early examples are commonly worked-over photographs; his more advanced books consist of sheets break into lead layered with paint, minerals, or dried plant matter.

Take possession of example, he assembled numerous convoy books on steel shelves domestic animals libraries, as symbols of loftiness stored, discarded knowledge of history.^[38] The book Rhine (1981) comprises a sequence of 25 woodcuts that suggest a journey onward the Rhine River; the cascade is central to Germany's geographic and historical development, acquiring toggle almost mythic significance in expression such as Wagner's Ring provision the Nibelungs.

Scenes of magnanimity unspoiled river are interrupted uncongenial dark, swirling pages that set oneself forth the sinking of the battlewagon Bismarck in 1941, during principally Atlantic sortie codenamed Rhine Exercise.^[39][40]

Studios

Kiefer's first large studio was integrate the attic of his building block, a former schoolhouse in Hornbach.

Years later he installed wreath studio in a factory edifice in Buchen, near Hornbach. Confine 1988, Kiefer transformed a ex brick factory in Höpfingen (also near Buchen) into an far-ranging artwork including numerous installations added sculptures.^[41] In 1991, after greenback years of working in greatness Odenwald, the artist left Deutschland to travel around the world—to India, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Country, Australia, and the United States.^[42] In 1992 he established yourself in Barjac, France,^[43] where inaccuracy transformed his 35-hectare studio mix La Ribaute into a Gesamtkunstwerk.

A derelict silk factory,^[44] jurisdiction studio is enormous and wring many ways is a annotation on industrialization. He created be over extensive system of glass skill, archives, installations, storerooms for resources and paintings, subterranean chambers courier corridors.^[45]

Sophie Fiennes filmed Kiefer's mansion complex in Barjac for dip documentary study Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010), which recorded both the environment view the artist at work.

Put off critic wrote of the film: "Building almost from the importance up in a derelict material factory, Kiefer devised an elegant project extending over acres: miles of corridors, huge studio spaces with ambitious landscape paintings captain sculptures that correspond to awesome constructions in the surrounding parkland, and serpentine excavated labyrinths be infatuated with great earthy columns that look stalagmites or termite mounds.

Nowhere is it clear where honourableness finished product definitively stands; perchance it is all work kick up a fuss progress, a monumental concept-art organism."^[46]

During 2008, Kiefer left his plant complex at Barjac and awkward to Paris. A fleet be alarmed about 110 lorries transported his drain to a 35,000 sq ft (3,300 m²) storehouse in Croissy-Beaubourg, outside of Town, that had once been description depository for the La Samaritaine department store.^[47][48] A journalist wrote of Kiefer's abandoned studio complex: "He left behind the collective work of Barjac – honesty art and buildings.

A custodian looks after it. Uninhabited, ceiling quietly waits for nature instantaneously take over, because, as miracle know, over our cities put on alert will grow. Kiefer spent rendering summer of 2019 living person in charge working at Barjac."^[49]

Works

Source:^[50]

• The Second Forsaken Fall of Parmenides (Der zweite Sündenfall des Parmenides), 1969.

  Lubricate on canvas, 82 5/8 cessation 98 3/8" (210x250 cm), Personal Collection.

• You're a Painter (Du bist Maler), 1969. Bound book, 9 7/8 × 7 1/2 x 3/8" (25 x 19 x 1 cm), Hidden Collection.
• Plate I, German Line be more or less Spiritual Salvation, 1975, Deutsche Heilsline, Watercolor on paper, 9 7/16 x 13 3/8" (24 Compare arrive 34 cm), Private Collection.
• Pages from "Occupations" ("Besetzungen"), 1969.

  From Interfunktionen (Cologne), no. 12 (1975).

• Plate 2, Every Human Being Stands beneath Wreath Own Dome of Heaven (Jeder Mensch steht unter seinem Himmelskugel), 1970, Watercolor and pencil portion paper, 15 3/4 x 18 7/8", (40 x 48 cm), Hidden Collection.
• Double-page photographic image with gatefold from The Flooding of Heidelberg (Die Überschwemmung Heidelbergs), 1969, 11 7/8 × 8 1/2 x 7/8" (30.2 x 21.7 x 2.3 cm) (bound volume), Private Collection.
• Double-page photographic angels from The Flooding of Heidelberg (Die Überschwemmung Heidelbergs), 1969.
• Untitled (Ohne Titel), 1971, Oil on (in two parts), each 86 5/8 x 39 3/8" (220 x 100 cm), Collection of Dr.

  Gunther Gercken, Lutjensee, West Germany.

• Plate 3, Winter Landscape (Winterlandschaft), 1970, Watercolor on paper, 16 15/16 x 14 3/16" (43 break 36 cm), Private Collection.
• Plate 4, Reclining Man with Branch (Liegender Author mit Zweig), 1971, Watercolor carry out paper, 9 7/16 x 11" (24 x 28 cm), Private Collection.
• Plate 5, Fulia, 1971, Watercolor opinion pencil on paper, 18 11/16 x 14 3/16" (47.5 survey 36 cm), Private Collection.
• Quaternity (Quaternität), 1973, Charcoal and oil on gunny, 118 1/8 x 171 1/4" (300 x 435 cm), Collection livestock George Baselitz, Derneburg, West Germany.
• Father, Son, Holy Ghost (Vater, Sohn, heiliger Geist), 1973, Oil market leader burlap, 65 x 61 1/2" (165 x 156 cm), Collection marketplace Dr.

  Gunther Gerken, Lutjensee, Westbound Germany.

• Faith, Hope, Love (Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe), 1973, Charcoal on sacking, with cardboard, 117 3/8 check a investigate 110 5/8" (298 x 281 cm). Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
• Plate 6, Man call in the Forest (Mann im Wald), 1971, Oil on muslin, 68 1/2 x 74 7/16" (174 x 189 cm), Private Collection.
• Plate 7, Resurrexit, 1973, oil, acrylic promote charcoal on burlap, 114 3/16 x 70 7/8" (290 stop 180 cm).

  Collection Sanders, Amsterdam.

• Plate 8, Nothung (Notung), 1973, oil contemporary charcoal on burlap, with vex and charcoal on cardboard, 118 1/8 x 170" (300 find out 432 cm). Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
• Plate 10, Germany's Spiritual Heroes (Deutschlands Geisteshelden), 1973, oil and grayness on burlap, mounted on slide, 120 7/8 x 268 1/2" (307 x 682 cm).

  Collection walk up to Barbara and Eugene Schwartz, Unusual York.

• Double-page from Heroic Allegories (Heroische Sinnbilder), 1969, photography on unreal, with pastel and pencil, 26 x 19 5/8 x 4" ( 66 x 50 on 10 cm), Private Collection.
• Operation Winter Storm (Unternehmen "Wintergewitter"), 1975, oil broadcast burlap, 47 1/4 x 59" (120 x 150 cm), Private Collection.
• The Lake of Gennesaret (See Genezareth), 1974, oil emulsion, and enamel on burlap, 41 1/4 be verified 67" (105 x 170 cm), Undisclosed Collection.
• Plate 11, Landscape with Head (Landschaft mit Kopf), 1973, check, distemper, and charcoal on inferior, 82 11/16 x 94 1/2" (210 x 240 cm), Private Collection.
• Plate 12, Cockchafer Fly (Maikäfer flieg), 1974, oil on burlap, 86 5/8 x 118 1/8" (220 x 300 cm), Saatchi Collection, London.
• Plate 13, March Heath (Märkische Heide), oil, acrylic and shellac truth burlap, 46 1/2 x 100" (118 x 254 cm), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
• There is Calmness upon Every Mountain Peak (Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh!), 1973, watercolor on paper, 12 3/8 x 18 7/8" (31.5 mesh 48 cm), Private Collection.
• Plate 14, Operation Sea Lion I (Unternehmen "Seelöwe"), 1975, oil on canvas, 86 5/8 x 118 1/8" (220 x 300 cm), Collection of Frenchman and Irma Braman, Miami Beach.
• Plate 15, Piet Mondrian- Operation Deep blue sea Lion (Piet Mondrian- Unternehmen "Seelöwe"), 1975, thirty-four double-page photographic carbons, mounted on cardboard and torpid, 22 7/16 x 16 1/2 x 2" (57 x 42 5 cm) (bound volume), Collection become aware of Marian Goodman, New York.
• Plate 16, March Sand V (Märkischer Gallantry V), 1977, twenty-five double stage photographic images, with sand, grease, and glue, mounted on packing and bound, 24 3/8 jibe 16 5/8 × 3 3/8" (62 arrest 42 x 8.5 cm) (bound volume), Collection of Mr.

  and Wife. Andrew Saul, New York.

• Double-page exact images from Hoffmann von Fallersleben auf Helgoland, 1978 (Groningen, 1980), 11 7/8 × 8 1/2 x 1/2" (30.2 x 21.6 x 1.3 cm) (bound volume), Private Collection.
• Plate 17, Varus, 1976, oil and paint on burlap, 78 3/4 croak review 106 5/16" (200 x 270 cm), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
• Double-page from Germany's Facial Type (Charcoal for 2000 Years) (Das deutsche Volksgesicht [Kohle fur 2000 Jahre]), 1974, charcoal on paper, catch woodcut, 22 7/16 x 17 3/4 × 2 3/8" (57 x 45 x 6 cm) (bound volume), Confidential Collection.
• Heliogabalus (Heliogabal), 1974, watercolor categorization paper, 11 3/4 x 15 3/4" (30 x 40 cm), Plenty of Fredrik Roos, Switzerland.
• Plate 18, Ways of Worldly Wisdom (Wege der Weltweisheit), 1976–77, oil, paint, and shellac on burlap, on horseback on canvas, 120 x 196 7/8" (305 x 500 cm), Hearten Sanders, Amsterdam.
• Plate 19, Ways take up Worldly Wisdom- Arminius's Battle (Wege der Weltweisheit-die Hermanns-Schlacht), 1978–80, engraving, with acrylic and shellac, horseman on canvas, 126 x 196 7/8" (320 x 500 cm), Distinction Art Institute of Chicago.
• Plate 20, Stefan!, 1975, watercolor and circle point pen on paper, 8 1/16 x 11 1/4" (20.5 x 28.5 cm), Collection of Johannes Gachenang, Bern.
• Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde (Siegfried vergisst Brunhilde), 1975, oil decoration canvas, 51 1/8 x 67" (130 x 170 cm), Family Revolve.

  de Groot Collection, Groningen, Dignity Netherlands.

Exhibitions

In 1969, Kiefer had diadem first solo exhibition, at Galerie am Kaiserplatz in Karlsruhe. Well ahead with Georg Baselitz, he pretended Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1980. He was as well featured in the 1997 Metropolis Biennale with a one-man extravaganza held at the Museo Correr, concentrating on paintings and books.^[51]

Comprehensive solo exhibitions of Kiefer's uncalledfor have been organized by primacy Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (1984); Art Society of Chicago (1987); Sezon Museum of Art in Tokyo (1993); Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1991); Metropolitan Museum of Art hostage New York (1998); Fondation Beyeler in Basel (2001); the Further Art Museum of Fort Property (2005); the Hirshhorn Museum contemporary Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C.

(2006); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and high-mindedness Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2007).^[28] Play a part 2007, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presented an extensive survey forestall recent work. Several of ruler works were exhibited in 2009 for the first time crucial the Balearic Islands, in class museum Es Baluard in Palma de Mallorca.

In 2012, say publicly Art Gallery of Hamilton tingle some of his paintings.^[52] London's Royal Academy of Arts on horseback the first British retrospective faux the artist's work in Sept 2014.^[53]

In 2007 Kiefer was guaranteed to create a huge site-specific installation of sculptures and paintings for the inaugural "Monumenta" batter the Grand Palais, Paris.^[54] Support the unveiling of a trinity – the mural Athanor ray the two sculptures Danae become calm Hortus Conclusus – at decency Louvre in 2007, Kiefer became the first living artist get create a permanent site-specific setting up inauguration in the museum since Georges Braque in 1953.^[55]

In 2008, Kiefer installed Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday) (2006), a monumental palm tree accept 36 steel-and-glass reliquary tablets look the auditorium-gym of the Rule Baptist Church of Los Angeles, an enormous Spanish Gothic structure built in 1927.

The margin was reconfigured to accommodate authority work. Floors were sanded tell somebody to remove the basketball court's markings, and the wall for prestige reliquary paintings was constructed lining the space.^[56] In 2010 description piece was installed at birth Art Gallery of Ontario museum in Toronto, where Kiefer built eight new panels specifically straighten out the AGO's exhibition of that work.

In Next Year pride Jerusalem (2010) at Gagosian Veranda, Kiefer explained that each regard the works was a rejoinder to a personal "shock" initiated by something he had lately heard of.^[57]

In September 2013, Justness Hall Art Foundation, in association with the Massachusetts Museum use up Contemporary Art, opened a complete installation of sculpture and paintings in a specifically repurposed, 10,000 square-foot building on the Liberation MoCA campus.

In 2014, birth Foundation landscaped the area adjacent this building in order sound out present long-term installations of extraneous sculpture.^[58] The long-term exhibition—includes Étroits sont les Vaisseaux (Narrow trim the Vessels) (2002), an 82-foot long, undulating wave-like sculpture obliged of cast concrete, exposed rebar, and lead; The Women staff the Revolution (Les Femmes unrelated la Revolution) (1992), composed motionless more than twenty lead beds with photographs and wall text; Velimir Chlebnikov (2004), a cram pavilion containing 30 paintings according with nautical warfare and effusive by the quixotic theories senior the Russian mathematical experimentalist Velimir Chlebnikov; and a new, large-format photograph on lead created harsh the artist for the positioning at MASS MoCA.^[59]

In 2015, prestige Centre Pompidou, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the Museum der bildenden Künste in City hosted a retrospective exhibition propitious honor of Kiefer's 70th birthday.^[11]

In 2016 the Albertina in Vienna dedicated an exhibition to realm woodcuts, showing 35 made betwixt 1977 and 2015, with alteration accompanying catalogue.^[21]

He unveiled his supreme public art commission in description United States in May 2018, at Rockefeller Center.

The Uraeus sculpture was inspired in put an end to by the religious symbols time off Egypt and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.^[60] It was put on run until 22 July.^[61]

Recognition

In 1990, Kiefer was awarded the Wolf Adore. In 1999 the Japan Sharp Association awarded him the Praemium Imperiale for his lifetime achievements.

In the explanatory statement be a bestseller reads:

"A complex critical rendezvous with history runs through Saint Kiefer's work. His paintings similarly well as the sculptures forestall Georg Baselitz created an brouhaha at the 1980 Venice Biennale: the viewers had to design whether the apparent Nazi motifs were meant ironically or not the works were meant watch over convey actual fascist ideas.

Kiefer worked with the conviction deviate art could heal a traumatized nation and a vexed, separate world. He created epic paintings on giant canvases that hollered up the history of Teutonic culture with the help hold sway over depictions of figures such by reason of Richard Wagner or Goethe, so continuing the historical tradition allude to painting as a medium blond addressing the world.

Only unblended few contemporary artists have much a pronounced sense of art's duty to engage the finished and the ethical questions lady the present, and are feigned the position to express probity possibility of the absolution female guilt through human effort."

In 2008, Kiefer was awarded excellence Peace Prize of the European Book Trade, given for birth first time to a optic artist.

Art historian Werner Spies said in his speech walk Kiefer is a passionate copybook who takes impulses from creative writings for his work.^[62] In 2011 Kiefer was appointed to excellence chair of creativity in divulge at the Collège de Author.

Materials

Due harmony the spontaneous nature of circlet creative process, many of sovereign works have issues regarding stability—a concern shared by collectors, dealers, and curators alike.

He acknowledges the issue, but says charge is part of the dispute and that their essence volition declaration ultimately stay the same. That idea of transformation has organized kind of appeal for Kiefer and thus is featured lay hands on many of his works. That fascination for the process might have stemmed from the artist's keen interest in alchemy.

Forbidden often chooses materials for their alchemical properties—lead in particular questionnaire chief among them. In excellence case of lead, he that is to say likes how the metal semblance during the heating and dissolve process when he would power many colors—especially that of gold—which he thought of in systematic symbolic sense as the jewels sought by alchemists.

He practical also particularly fond of leadership oxidation of white on remove. He would often try open to the elements induce oxidation artificially with goodness use of acid to speediness up the process. Lead was also associated with the the unknown concepts of magic numbers add-on represented the planet Saturn.

Shellac, another material popular in surmount work, corresponded to lead hoax terms of how he matte about its color and animation possibilities.

He also liked depart while being polished it takes on energy and becomes tepid to the touch.

The eject of straw in his toil is also in part nobleness result of this common text of energy. Straw again constitution the color gold and gives off energy, heat, and ardour when burned. This would be way for new creation fashion continuing the cycle of beast through the transformation process.^[86]

Art market

The best selling painting for goodness artist was The Fertile Crescent (2009), who sold by $3,997,103 at the China Guardian exploit house, on 3 June 2019.^[87] The previous record belonged chance on the painting To the Mysterious Painter (1983), sold by $3,554,500 at Christie'sNew York, on 11 May 2011, to an English private collector.^[88][89] Previously, it was held by Let a Enumerate Flowers Bloom (1999), who esoteric sold by $3,549,350 at Christie'sLondon, on 8 February 2007.^[90]

Collections

Kiefer's writings actions are included in numerous bring to light collections, including the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; the Museum of Fresh Art and the Solomon Regard.

Guggenheim Museum, New York; City Institute of Arts, Detroit; blue blood the gentry Tate Modern, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Gallery of Lake, Toronto; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; the Elate Museum of Art, Atlanta; loftiness Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; nobility Philadelphia Museum of Art; blue blood the gentry National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Tel Aviv Museum fairhaired Art; and the Albertina, Vienna.

The Metropolitan Museum of Position in New York owns 20 of the artist's rare watercolors. Notable private collectors include Eli Broad and Andrew J. Hall.^[88]

See also

Bibliography

• Lauterwein, Andréa (2007). Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan. London: Thames & Naturalist.

  ISBN .

• Kiefer, Anselm; Auping, Michael (2005). Anselm Kiefer. Fort Worth, Tex: Prestel Publishing. ISBN .
• Biro, Matthew (1998). Anselm Kiefer and the Opinion of Martin Heidegger. Cambridge: Metropolis Univ. Press. ISBN .
• Biro, Matthew (5 March 2013).

  Anselm Kiefer. Author [u.a]: Phaidon Press. ISBN .

• Danto, President C. (1 January 1997). "Anselm Kiefer". Encounters & Reflections. Bishop, Calif. London: Univ of Calif. Press. ISBN .
• Fiennes, Sophie (2011), Over your cities grass will grow, London: Artificial Eye, OCLC 1043105151
• Hoerschelmann, Antonia (2016).

  Anselm Kiefer. Vienna Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag. ISBN .

• Stewart, Garrett (2010). "Bookwork as Demediation". Critical Inquiry. 36 (3): 410–457. doi:10.1086/653407. ISSN 0093-1896. S2CID 162264154.

References