Anselm Kiefer
Encyclopedia
Anselm Kiefer is a German painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...

 and Peter Dreher
Peter Dreher
Peter Dreher is a well-established German artist from the heart of the Black Forest region in southwestern Germany. As professor emeritus of painting, he has influenced a generation of internationally acclaimed artists, including Anselm Kiefer...

 during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw
Straw
Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry stalks of cereal plants, after the grain and chaff have been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has many uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and...

, ash, clay
Clay
Clay is a general term including many combinations of one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure.- Formation :Clay minerals...

, lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

, and shellac
Shellac
Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes , which are dissolved in ethyl alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish...

. The poems of Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...

 have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

.

In his entire body of work, Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...

 and controversial issues from recent history. Themes from Nazi rule are particularly reflected in his work; for instance, the painting "Margarethe" (oil and straw on canvas) was inspired by Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...

's well-known poem "Todesfuge
Todesfuge
Todesfuge is a German language poem written by the Romanian poet Paul Celan and first published in 1948. It is Celan's most famous poem.- Composition and Publication :...

" ("Death Fugue").

His works are characterised by a dull/musty, nearly depressive, destructive style and are often done in large scale formats. In most of his works, the use of photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

 as an output surface is prevalent and earth and other raw materials of nature are often incorporated. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and/or names of people of historical importance, legendary figures or places particularly pregnant with history. All of these are encoded sigils through which Kiefer seeks to process the past; this has resulted in his work being linked with a style called "New Symbolism."

Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1991.

Early life and career

Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen
Donaueschingen
Donaueschingen is a German town in the Black Forest in the southwest of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg in the Schwarzwald-Baar Kreis. It stands near the confluence of the two sources of the river Danube ....

, Germany on March 8, 1945, just a few months before the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. In 1951 he moved to Ottersdorf and attended grammar school in Rastatt
Rastatt
Rastatt is a city and baroque residence in the District of Rastatt, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located on the Murg river, above its junction with the Rhine and has a population of around 50'000...

. In 1966 he abandoned his law and Romance language studies at University of Freiburg to study at art academies in Freiburg
Freiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In the extreme south-west of the country, it straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain...

, Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

, and Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

. In Karlsruhe, he studied under Peter Dreher
Peter Dreher
Peter Dreher is a well-established German artist from the heart of the Black Forest region in southwestern Germany. As professor emeritus of painting, he has influenced a generation of internationally acclaimed artists, including Anselm Kiefer...

, an important realist and figurative painter.

Photography

Kiefer began his career as a photographer with performances in which he mimicked the Nazi salute
Nazi salute
The Nazi salute, or Hitler salute , was a gesture of greeting in Nazi Germany usually accompanied by saying, Heil Hitler! ["Hail Hitler!"], Heil, mein Führer ["Hail, my leader!"], or Sieg Heil! ["Hail victory!"]...

 on various locations in France, Switzerland and Italy calling for Germans to remember and to acknowledge the loss to their culture through the mad xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...

 of the Third Reich. In 1969 at Galerie am Kaiserplatz, Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

, he presented his first single exhibition "Besetzungen (Occupations)" with a series of photographs about controversial political actions.

Painting and Sculpture

By 1970 while studying informally under Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...

 at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...

, his stylistic leanings resembled Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz is a German painter who studied in the former East Germany, before moving to what was then the country of West Germany...

' approach. He worked with glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...

, straw
Straw
Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry stalks of cereal plants, after the grain and chaff have been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has many uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and...

, wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

 and plant parts. The use of these materials meant that his art works became temporary and fragile, which Kiefer himself is well aware of; he also wanted to showcase the materials in a way in which they were not disguised and could be represented in their natural form. The fragility of his work contrasts with the stark subject matter in his paintings. This use of familiar materials to express ideas was influenced by Joseph Beuys' art practice, in which Beuys used fat and carpet felt. It is also typical of the Neo-Expressionist style.

After many years away, Kiefer returned in 1971 to live and work in Donaueschingen. In the following years he incorporated German mythology in particular, and in the following decade he argued with the Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

. He went on expanded journeys throughout Europe, USA and the middle east, in which the latter two journeys further influenced his work. Besides paintings, Kiefer created sculptures, watercolors, woodcuts, and photographs.

A series of paintings Kiefer executed between 1980 and 1983 depict looming stone edifices, referencing famous examples of National Socialist architecture, particularly buildings designed by Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...

 and Wilhelm Kreis
Wilhelm Kreis
Wilhelm Kreis was a prominent German architect and professor of architecture, active through four political systems in German history: the Wilhelmine era, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the foundation of the Federal Republic.Kreis was born in Eltville am Rhein in Hesse-Nassau...

. By the mid-1980s, Kiefer’s themes widened from a focus on Germany's
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 role in civilization to the fate of art and culture in general. His work became more sculptural and involved not only national identity and collective memory, but also occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

 symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...

ism, theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 and mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

. The theme of all the work is the trauma experienced by entire societies, and the continual rebirth and renewal in life. During the 1980s his paintings became more physical, and featured unusual textures and materials.

Kiefer's paintings of the 1990s explore the universal myths of existence and meaning rather than those of national identity. From 1995 to 2001, he started a cycle of large paintings of the cosmos. He also started to turn to sculpture, though lead still remains his preferred medium.

In 2006, Kiefer’s exhibition, Velimir Chlebnikov, was first shown in a small studio near Barjac in the South of France then moved to White Cube
White Cube
White Cube is a contemporary art gallery designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates in Hoxton Square in the East End of London Mason's Yard, in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London...

 in London and finished in the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in rural Connecticut. The work consists of 30 large paintings—six-feet high and around 10-feet long—hanging on two banks of 15 on facing walls of an expressly constructed grooved steel building that mimics the studio in which it was originally created. The work refers to the eccentric theories of the Russian futurist
Russian Futurism
Russian Futurism is the term used to denote a group of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism"...

 philosopher/poet Velimir Chlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov , pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov , was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement, but his work and influence stretch far beyond it.Khlebnikov belonged to Hylaea,...

, who invented his own "language of the future" which he called "Zaum", and postulated, among other things, that cataclysmic sea battles shift the course of history once every 317 years. In his paintings, Kiefer’s toy-like battleships—misshapen, battered, rusted and hanging by twisted wires—are cast about by paint and plaster waves. The work’s recurrent color notes are black and white and gray and rust, and their surfaces are rough and slathered with paint and plaster and mud and clay.

In 2009, Kiefer mounted two exhibitions at the White Cube
White Cube
White Cube is a contemporary art gallery designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates in Hoxton Square in the East End of London Mason's Yard, in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London...

 gallery in London. A series of forest diptychs and triptychs enclosed in glass vitrines, many filled with dense Moroccan thorns, was entitled Karfunkelfee, a term from German Romanticism
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...

 stemming from a poem by the post-war Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann
Ingeborg Bachmann
Ingeborg Bachmann was an Austrian poet and author.-Biography:Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of a headmaster. She studied philosophy, psychology, German philology, and law at the universities of Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna...

. In The Fertile Crescent, Kiefer presented a group of epic paintings inspired initially by a trip to India fifteen years earlier where he first encountered rural brick factories. Over the past decade the photographs Kiefer took in India "reverberated" in his mind to suggest a vast array of cultural and historical references, reaching from the first human civilisation of Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

 to the ruins of Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, where he played as a small boy. "Anyone in search of a resonant meditation on the instability of built grandeur", wrote the historian Simon Schama
Simon Schama
Simon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...

 in his catalogue essay, "would do well to look hard at Kiefer’s The Fertile Crescent".

Books

From 1969 Kiefer also worked on book design. Early examples are typically worked-over photographs; his more recent books consist of sheets of lead layered with the artist's characteristic materials of paint, minerals, or dried plant matter. For example he assembled numerous lead books on steel shelves in libraries, as symbols of the stored, discarded knowledge of history. The book Rhine (1981) comprises a sequence of 25 woodcuts, that suggest a journey downstream along the banks of the Rhine. The river is central to Germany's geographical and historical development, acquiring an almost mythic significance in works such as Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs. Scenes of the unspoiled river are interrupted by dark, swirling pages that represent the sinking of the battleship Bismark in 1945, during an Atlantic sortie codenamed Rhine Exercise
Operation Rheinübung
Operation Rheinübung was the sortie into the Atlantic by the new German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen on 18–27 May 1941, during World War II...

.

Studios

In 1991 Kiefer departed his studio in a large converted brick factory in Buchen
Buchen
Buchen is a town in Germany Neckar-Odenwald district, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated in the Odenwald low mountain range, 23 km northeast of Mosbach.-Geography:...

, and spent time traveling in Japan, Mexico and India. In 1992 he established himself in Barjac
Barjac, Gard
Barjac is a commune in the Gard department in southern France.The valley of the river Cèze lies to the south, and the river Ardèche is to the north....

, France, where he transformed his 35-hectare studio compound La Ribaute into a Gesamtkunstwerk
Gesamtkunstwerk
A Gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so...

. A derelict silk factory, his studio is enormous and in many ways is a comment on industrialization. He has created there an extensive system of glass buildings, archives, installations, storerooms for materials and paintings, subterranean chambers and corridors.

Sophie Fiennes
Sophie Fiennes
Sophia Victoria Twisleton Wykeham-Fiennes , known as Sophie Fiennes, is an English film director and producer.-Career:Following a foundation course in painting at Chelsea School of Art, Fiennes worked with director Peter Greenaway from 1987–1992. She managed the UK based dance company, The Michael...

 filmed Kiefer's studio complex in Barjac for her documentary study, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010), which recorded both the environment and the artist at work. One critic wrote of the film: "Building almost from the ground up in a derelict silk factory, Kiefer devised an artistic project extending over acres: miles of corridors, huge studio spaces with ambitious landscape paintings and sculptures that correspond to monumental constructions in the surrounding woodland, and serpentine excavated labyrinths with great earthy columns that resemble stalagmites or termite mounds. Nowhere is it clear where the finished product definitively stands; perhaps it is all work in progress, a monumental concept-art organism."

Around 2008, Kiefer left his studio complex at Barjac and moved to Paris. A fleet of 110 lorries transported his work to a warehouse on the Périphérique, outside Paris, that had once been the depository for the La Samaritaine
La Samaritaine
La Samaritaine was a large department store in Paris, France, located in the First Arrondissement. The nearest metro station is Pont-Neuf. It is currently owned by LVMH, a luxury-goods maker. The store, which had been operating at a loss since the 1970s, was finally closed in 2005 because the...

 department store. A journalist wrote of Kiefer's abandoned studio complex: "He left behind the great work of Barjac — the art and buildings. A caretaker looks after it. Uninhabited, it quietly waits for nature to take over, because, as we know, over our cities grass will grow."

Exhibitions

In 1969, Kiefer had his first solo exhibition, at Galerie am Kaiserplatz in Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

. Along with Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz is a German painter who studied in the former East Germany, before moving to what was then the country of West Germany...

, he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

 in 1980. Comprehensive solo exhibitions of Kiefer's work have been organized by the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
-Building:The present art centre was built in 1967 in Brutalist architecture by the architects Konrad Beckmann and Brockes. They used commercially available precast concrete for the construction work.-History:...

 (1984); Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

 (1987); Sezon Museum of Art in Tokyo (1993); Neue Nationalgalerie
Neue Nationalgalerie
Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin...

 in Berlin (1991); Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 in New York (1998); Fondation Beyeler in Basel (2001); the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth was first granted a Charter from the State of Texas in 1892 as the "Fort Worth Public Library and Art Gallery", evolving through several name changes and different facilities in Fort Worth...

 (2005); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...

 (2006); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

 and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The...

 (2007). He was also featured in the 1997 Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

 with a one-man show held at the Museo Correr
Museo Correr
The Museo Correr is the civic museum of Venice, located in the Piazza San Marco, and is entered by the ceremonial stairway in the Ala Napoleonica at the western end of the Piazza opposite the church of San Marco at the other end...

, concentrating on paintings and books. In 2007, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The...

 presented an extensive survey of recent work and Kiefer was commissioned to create a huge site-specific installation of sculptures and paintings for the inaugural "Monumenta" at the Grand Palais
Grand Palais
This article contains material abridged and translated from the French and Spanish Wikipedia.The Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées, commonly known as the Grand Palais , is a large historic site, exhibition hall and museum complex located at the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France...

, Paris. With the unveiling of a triptych - the mural Athanor and the two sculptures Danae and Hortus Conclusus - at the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

 in 2007, Kiefer became the first living artist to create a permanent site-specific installation in the museum since Georges Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...

 in 1953. In 2009, he directed and designed the sets for Am Anfang (In the Beginning) by Jörg Widmann
Jörg Widmann
Jörg Widmann is a German composer and clarinetist. He lives and works in Munich and Freiburg.- Education and career :...

 at the Opéra National de Paris.

Kiefer is represented by Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Yvon Lambert in 1966. There are two locations; one in Paris and the second in New York City.-History:...

 in Paris, Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...

 in New York, White Cube
White Cube
White Cube is a contemporary art gallery designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates in Hoxton Square in the East End of London Mason's Yard, in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London...

 in London, and Thaddaeus Ropac in Vienna. Before moving to Gagosian, he showed with Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.

Recognition

In 1990 he was awarded a Wolf Prize. In 1999 the Japan Art Association awarded him the Praemium Imperiale
Praemium Imperiale
The Praemium Imperiale is an arts prize awarded since 1989 by the imperial family of Japan on behalf of the Japan Art Association in the fields painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theatre/film...

 for his lifetime achievements. In the explanatory statement it reads:

"A complex critical engagement with history runs through Anselm Kiefer's work. His paintings as well as the sculptures of Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz
Georg Baselitz is a German painter who studied in the former East Germany, before moving to what was then the country of West Germany...

 created an uproar at the 1980 Venice Biennale: the viewers had to decide whether the apparent Nazi motifs were meant ironically or whether the works were meant to convey actual fascist ideas. Kiefer worked with the conviction that art could heal a traumatized nation and a vexed, divided world. He created epic paintings on giant canvases that called up the history of German culture with the help of depictions of figures such as Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 or Goethe, thus continuing the historical tradition of painting as a medium of addressing the world. Only a few contemporary artists have such a pronounced sense of art's duty to engage the past and the ethical questions of the present, and are in the position to express the possibility of the absolution of guilt through human effort."

In 2008, Anselm Kiefer was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is an international peace prize given yearly at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt am Main, Germany...

. Art historian Werner Spies
Werner Spies
Werner Spies is a German art historian, journalist and organizer of exhibitions. From 1997 to 2000, he was also a director of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.-Life and work:...

 said in his speech, that Kiefer is a passionate reader who takes impulses from literature for his work. In 2011 Kiefer was appointed to the chair of creativity in art at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...

.
  • 1983 Hans-Thoma-Preis
  • 1990 Wolf Prize
  • 1990 Goslarer Kaiserring
  • 1997 International Prize by the Jury of the 47. Biennale di Venezia
  • 1999 Praemium Imperiale
    Praemium Imperiale
    The Praemium Imperiale is an arts prize awarded since 1989 by the imperial family of Japan on behalf of the Japan Art Association in the fields painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theatre/film...

  • 2005 Federal Cross of Merit First Class
  • 2005 Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
  • 2008 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
    Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
    The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is an international peace prize given yearly at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt am Main, Germany...

  • 2011 Berliner Bär (B.Z.-Kulturpreis)

  • Biography, Criticism, Catalogues, Monographs, Documentaries

    • Danto, Arthur. in "Anselm Kiefer". Encounter and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present. New York: Farrar Strauss Grioux, 1990.
    • Auping, Michael. Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth catalogue for exhibition of the same name, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2005. Munich: Preston, 2005.
    • Fiennes, Sophie. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow. Documentary film. 105 min. France, Netherlands, Great Britain, 2010.

    External links

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