Anselm Kiefer, Essence, 2011, oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, sacle with salt and remain of colour on canvas, 3 parts each 280 x 190cm, overall 280 x 570 cm, © Anselm Kiefer, 2011, Courtesy Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V.

Anselm Kiefer, Böhmen liegt am Meer, 1995, 190 x 559 cm, oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac on burlap, Collection Frieder Burda, © Anselm Kiefer, 2011.

Anselm Kiefer, Shebirat Ha Kelim, 1990, plumb, glas, dress, ash and woman’s hair on wood, 380 x 250 x 35 cm, © Anselm Kiefer, 2011, Courtesy Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V.

Anselm Kiefer in front of the work Der fruchtbare Halbmond at Museum Frieder Burda. © Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden.

Museum Frieder Burda 
Lichtentaler Allee 8b
+ 07221/39898-0
Baden-Baden
Anselm Kiefer.
Selected works from the Grothe collection
October 7, 2011-January 15, 2012

Anselm Kiefer is known to be one of the most important contemporary artists in Germany as well as the world. Selected works by Kiefer from the Grothe collection will be shown at Museum Frieder Burda. Curator Walter Smerling has selected 33 large format pictures from 30 years, focusing on the decade 2000. For the first time, the work Essence from the current series of alpine landscapes will be publicly exhibited. From the collection Frieder Burda, the work Böhmen liegt am Meer from 1995 is shown.

The focus of the exhibition is on the monumental picture Der fruchtbare Halbmond The fertile half moon (460 x 760 cm), a work from the year 2009. It refers to the consolidation of the occident and orient and is exhibited in Germany for the first time. Kiefer’s theme is the tower of Babel and the cradle of our culture, situated in the fertile Mesopotamia. The tower divided religions and languages, but Kiefer believes in the originally uniting aspects: the foundations are no longer simply destroyed, but also under construction. The former power of the fertile land can be regenerated, the solidarity of the different cultures becomes possible.

When selling his substantial collection, Hans Grothe did not sell his works by Anselm Kiefer. He acquired his first pictures by Kiefer out of mere fascination and because he was emotionally touched; since at first, the rational contents did not really become accessible to him. The collection includes works from three decades that fascinate due to their unique materials, the compelling density of their messages and the intensity of their aura, becoming especially visible when contrasting the different works.

In the works selected for the exhibition, the German past is not so much at the center of attention as it is characteristic for several other works. The curator Walter Smerling explains: “It is rather the christian-jewish or mythological themes that dominate. And the often described emotionalism of Kiefer’s works seems to be strangely altered, reduced or even neutralized. The works are impressive, without being overwhelming, and they invite you to analyze and reflect on them“

Right from the beginning, Kiefer‘s paintings were located between abstraction and figuration. Symbolic combinations are created from lead, concrete, dried plants, glass, barbed wire and other heterogeneous materials. Due to numerous pastose, not too colorful layers, the surface of the picture receives a relief structure, leading to a plasticity of the pictures nearly resembling a sculpture.

Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen/Baden-Württemberg in 1945. He attended school in Rastatt, where today you can see a monumental installation by him, made from carved wood. He studied arts at the art academies in Freiburg, Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf. From 1993 to 2006, he lived and worked in Barjac, in the Département Gard in Southern France. Since 2007, Anselm Kiefer has lived in Paris, where in 2010 he was called to the Collège de France as a professor. In 1999 in Tokio, he was awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Prize. In 2008, he was awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels.

The exhibition was developed in close cooperation between the Museum Frieder Burda and the Foundation for Art and Culture in Bonn. A catalog is available from the editorial Wienand Verlag.

The comprehensive retrospective of William N. Copley (1919-1996) at the museum Frieder Burda will present more than 80 works from the American, who was in his role as artist, galerist, author and editor an important mediator between the surrealist and Pop-Art. In the tradition of Dada, surrealism and American pop-art, he ironically and humorously deals with erotic games between male and female in all its facets. Most of the works come from the artist’s estate, many of them are publicly exhibited for the first time. The collection Frieder Burda includes a significant body of work by William N. Copley, which will be shown as well.

Anselm Kiefer in front of the work Der fruchtbare Halbmond at Museum Frieder Burda. © Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden.

Anselm Kiefer, Der fruchtbare Halbmond, 2009, oil and emulsion on canvas, 460 x 760 cm, © Anselm Kiefer, 2011, Courtesy Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V.

Anselm Kiefer, Lilith, 1987-1990, oil, emulsion, shellac, plumb, poppy, hair and clay on canvas, 380 x 560 cm, © Anselm Kiefer, 2011, Courtesy Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V.

Anselm Keifer, born 1945, Palm Sunday (Palmsonntag), 2006, Mixed media, Overall display dimensions variable, installation, Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008.

Anselm Keifer, born 1945, Palette, 1981, Oil, shellac and emulsion on canvas, support: 2905 x 4000 x 35 mm, Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008.

Anselm Keifer, born 1945, Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles, 1999, Mixed media, support: 4700 x 4000 mm object: 3400 x 1650 x 1100 mm, Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008.

Anselm Keifer, born 1945, Urd Werdande Skuld (The Norns), 1983, Oil, shellac, emulsion and fibre on canvas, support: 4205 x 2805 x 60 mm, Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008.

Baltic Centre
for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays
South Shore Road
+44 (0)191 478 1810
Gateshead
Anselm Kiefer at Baltic
October 8, 2010-January 16, 2011

Anselm Kiefer at Baltic includes painting, sculpture and installation, some of which has been rarely seen before. The starting point for Kiefer’s work is his fascination with myth, history, theology, philosophy and literature. For many years his painting was a vehicle to come to terms with his country’s past, and subsequently became ever concerned with religious traditions and the symbolism of different cultures. Kiefer’s weighty subject matters are reflected in the monumental scale of many of his works, while his keen exploration and visceral layering of materials such as lead, ash, rope and human hair bring an emotional potency.

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art hosts a major exhibition of the work of Anselm Kiefer, one of the foremost figures of European post-war painting. The exhibition includes a diverse body of work, offering a selection that spans four decades and ranges from early paintings to monumental installations. Presented over two floors of BALTIC’s galleries, the exhibition is Kiefer’s largest in the UK for many years and has been made possible by Artist Rooms on Tour with the Art Fund.

Among the paintings to be included in the exhibition are three works from the artist’s early Parsifal series (1973), drawn from Richard Wagner’s last opera and its 13th century source, a romance by Wolfram von Eschenbach based upon the legend of the Holy Grail. With Palette 1981, Kiefer revealed the problematic legacy inherited by artists in post-war Germany: the artist’s palette hangs from a single burning thread evoking shame, loss and the apparent impossibility of artistic creation. The expansive Man under a Pyramid 1996, which measures more than five meters long, continues the artist’s interest in meditation and the linking of body and mind.

Also included is Palmsonntag 2006 which comprises a vast sequence of 36 paintings arranged around a full-size palm tree. While avoiding explicit religious statement, the work draws upon the Christian narrative of Palm Sunday to explore death and resurrection, decay, re-creation and rejuvenation; human themes that are central to Kiefer’s practice and that will be identified throughout this presentation.

A key figure in European post-war culture, Anselm Kiefer’s art derives from his great awareness of history, theology, mythology, literature and philosophy, and his exploration of a range of materials such as lead, concrete, straw, clay, flowers and seeds.

Kiefer grew up in Germany close to the French border on the Rhine and looked to France as his spiritual home. His early work was influenced by Joseph Beuys and in the context of the immediate post-war period, Kiefer set out to understand Germany’s recent history, then still a taboo subject.

In later work, the artist drew on German military history, Wagnerian mythology and Nazi architecture to grapple with the possibility of pursuing creativity in the light of catastrophic human suffering. Kiefer’s technique of layering paint and debris gives visceral life to his preoccupations with decay and re-creation.

After the reunification of Germany Kiefer moved to Barjac, a small town in the South of France, developing and widening his preoccupations. His study of ancient belief-systems such as the Kabbala and travel to South America, India, China and Australia expanded his interests to a cosmic view of the world. In Barjac he was able to work on an even larger scale and confronted with the natural world, became interested in theories about the lives of plants, the microcosm and macrocosm, and the concept that for every plant there exists a correlated star.

Artist Rooms includes works made across the artist’s career. Palette is one of a series of works in which Kiefer has equated painting with burning, which cleanses the countryside and is intended to cauterise the wound inflicted by Nazism. Urd, Werdande, Skuld refers to the Norns or Fates of Germanic mythology, while Man under a Pyramid reflects the artist’s interest in exploring the mind and body through meditation. The title of Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles (The dark light that falls from the stars) takes a line from Le Cid by Corneille which came to mind when Kiefer began to work with sunflowers: "There was an obvious parallel with the black seeds on the flower and the night and the stars. The seeds were the stars. When I stuck them on a white canvas they became inverted stars, black on white like a negative. The huge installation Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday), refers to the Christian holy day and suggests the balance between death and resurrection, decay and recreation so characteristic of Kiefer’s work.

Anselm Keifer, born 1945, Man under a Pyramid, 1996, Emulsion, acrylic, shellac and ash on burlap, support: 2815 x 5030 x 65 mm support: 730 x 5035 x 95 mm, Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008.

Anselm Kiefer, Etroits sont les Vaisseaux (Narrow Are the Vessels) (2002), installation view.

Anselm Kiefer, Etroits sont les Vaisseaux (Narrow Are the Vessels) (2002), installation view.

MASS MoCA
87 Marshall Street
North Adams
Anselm Kiefer:
Sculpture and Paintings
from the Hall Collection
October 20, 2007-October 2009

German artist Anselm Kiefer conjoins matter, history and time in a moving installation of paintings and monumental sculpture. MASS MoCA’s centerpiece Building 4 galleries feature four vast landscape paintings from a recent series never before seen in the United States, two paintings from the 1980s, and an immense concrete sculpture, Etroits sont les Vaisseaux.

“Among our most important poets of war, in this surprising body of works Anselm Kiefer presents us with poignant moments of color flowering across the ruined topographies of his vast canvases,” said Joseph Thompson, Director of MASS MoCA. “For reasons I still cannot fully fathom, the Connecticut courts have recently required Andy and Christine Hall to remove Kiefer’s elegiac Etroits sont les Vaisseaux from their property. I’ve long admired that particular sculpture — its siting was exquisite — and I was delighted when the Halls offered it on long-term loan to MASS MoCA. That spirited act of generosity was further amplified as we discussed creating a specific installation of Kiefer works keyed to Etroits sont les Vaisseaux. Admirers of Kiefer will find this exhibition revelatory — the relative profusion of color is unexpected, and somehow especially touching because of that fact — and for those who may have missed the wonderful Fort Worth and Bilbao surveys of Kiefer’s work, this focused installation presents a powerful environment in which to become familiar with his recent work. Two earlier canvases with overlapping themes will place this timely new body of work in a broader context.”

Artforum describes Kiefer’s art as “sensuous and mesmerizing images through which … we gain entry to his arcane mindscape of ancient and recent history, philosophy, botany, Nordic myth, National Socialism, alchemy, and Wagner.” The Independent said in a review of Kiefer’s February 2007 exhibition at London’s White Cube Gallery: “Great art is about transformation. And transforming experience and transforming materials are what Anselm Kiefer specializes in. The contrasting themes of destruction and recreation, violent upheaval and spiritual renewal, underpin much of the artist's work.”

Paintings included in the exhibition are: A.E.I.O.U (Elizabeth von Oesterreich) (1987), Air-Battle England (1988), Aperiatur Terra et Germinet Salvatorem (2005-2006), Nachricht vom Fall Trojas (2005-2006), Olympe-Fur Victor Hugo (2005-2006), and Rorate caeli et nubes pluant iustum (2005-2006). For some of these works Kiefer refers to the Biblical incantation from Isaiah 45:8: “Let the earth open,” expressing the phrase with a series of fractured landscapes which convey the life force of germinating plants and the immense rejuvenating energies of the sun.

Rosenthal describes Kiefer’s paintings: “A landscape by Kiefer always fills the field of the canvas, with the horizon line and suggestion of sky minimal. Adding to this sense of claustrophobia, Kiefer’s typical large-scale format imparts a sense of portentous enormity to the experience. Before one of these mighty paintings, the viewer might feel his face pushed against the painted field, or else envision flying over it, though at a very low altitude. The depicted breadth even conveys a sense of the curvature of the earth. Dark in tonality and sometimes shown with fires burning, these often-blackened places seem to have only recently been abandoned by human inhabitants. The depictions are at night or at dusk, thereby adding a melancholic sense of foreboding that horrific events have only just subsided.”

The paintings surround Etroits sont les Vaisseaux (Narrow Are the Vessels) (2002), an 82-foot-long work of cast concrete, exposed rebar, and lead, rolling in ribbons through the gallery like waves along the shore. The concrete evokes rubble, aftermath of war, natural disaster, and immense structural failure. The title comes from the late French Nobel laureate known as Saint-John Perse who wrote, "One wave throughout the world, one wave since Troy rolls its haunch towards us."

Born and raised in southern Germany in 1945 in the final days of the collapse of the Third Reich, Kiefer experienced divided postwar Germany firsthand. A law student, he switched to art in 1965 and had his first solo exhibit in 1970. His works often incorporate materials like straw, ash, clay, lead, dirt and shellac. Poems of Paul Celan have had a role in shaping his themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust, as have the theological concepts of Kabbalah.

Kiefer ranks among the best-known and most successful, but also most controversial, of post World War II German artists. In his entire body of work, Kiefer argues with the past and addresses taboo and controversial issues from recent history. Themes from Nazi rule are often reflected in his work; for instance, the painting Margarethe (1981, oil and straw on canvas) was inspired by Paul Celan's well-known poem Todesfuge (Death Fugue). His works are often realized in extremely large formats (some of the paintings in the current exhibition span 25 feet in length, by 10 feet high). He often builds his imagery on top of photographs, layering the massive canvases with dirt, lead, straw and other materials that generate a literal “ground” that reads of the earth itself. Within these thick, impastoed surfaces (and often by careful titling,) Kiefer embeds textual or symbolic references to historic figures or places: these become encoded signals through which Kiefer invokes and processes history a practice which has linked with a style called "New Symbolism."

During the early 1970’s Kiefer studied with conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, whose interest in using an array of cultural myths, metaphors and personal symbolic vocabulary as a means by which to engage and understand history inspired Kiefer. (At MASS MoCA, one of his paintings will be shown in an adjacent gallery that houses Beuys’s masterpiece Lightning with Stag in Its Glare, on long-term loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)

Kiefer’s early work did not conform to either the Minimalist or Conceptualist movements that were developing at the time he was a student. Instead he created massive, dark paintings and quasi-figurative works that explored German folklore and were inspired by Caspar David Friedrich, among others. In addition to paintings, Kiefer also produced drawings, watercolors, prints, sculptural books and engravings.

Kiefer describes his own artistic process as stimulated by Beuys’s philosophies: “Painting, for me, is not just about creating an illusion. I don’t paint to present an image of something. I paint only when I have received an apparition, a shock, when I want to ‘transform’ something. Something that possesses me, and from which I have to deliver myself. Something I need to transform, to metabolize, and which gives me a reason to paint.”

Anselm Kiefer, Chevirat Ha-Kelim (Breaking of the Vessels), 2000.

Anselm Kiefer, Buch (The Secret Life of Plants), 2002, Mixed media on lead, Page Dimensions: 77 x 57 x 1", Diameter of open book: 113".

Anselm Kiefer, Resurrexit, 1973, 290x180cm

Anselm Kiefer, Work in Progress (2006).

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Abandoibarra Et. 2
Bilbao
+34 944359000
Spain
Anselm Kiefer
March 28, 2006-September 3, 2007

One of the foremost artists of our time, Kiefer was born in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II, and grew up witnessing the destruction of modern warfare, the division of his homeland, and the rebuilding of a fragmented nation and its struggle for renewal. Believing there are no truths, only interpretations, Kiefer questions the place of humans in the cosmos and has devoted himself to examining the interwoven patterns of German history, mythology, literature, identity, and architecture, creating all-encompassing works whose surfaces are as complex, multi-layered, and fragmented as their subjects. Infused with references to both the German romantic tradition and its political and philosophical heritage, these large-scale works meld painting with collage and sculpture, combining a nearly monochromatic painter’s palette with unorthodox materials, such as lead, wire, straw, plaster, mud, seeds, sunflowers, ash, and dust. The result is a prolific oeuvre whose monumental scale and rich interplay of textures heighten the solemnity and transcendental nature of its contents.

Curated by Germano Celant, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. This thematic exhibition, a comprehensive anthology of Kiefer's works, showcases a selection of iconic works of the last ten years from the artist’s own personal holdings, as well as from private and public collections, including important pieces from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

In recent years, Kiefer has explored a more universal set of themes — still based on religion and occult symbolism, myth, and history — but now focusing on the global fate of art and culture, as well as spirituality and the workings and mysteries of the mind. Kiefer’s art reflects on global civilization and faith and alerts us to the cyclical pattern of history, while exploring and struggling with the fundamental experiences and burdens of the human condition.

This exhibition documents with particular emphasis Kiefer’s monumental interventions, namely works that have a strong relationship with architecture and have been placed symbolically in environments loaded with historical, religious and cultural references. These include a selection of the series of majestic paintings Chevirat-Ha-Kelim (The Breaking of the Vessels) (2000), and other subjects on a grand scale, such as his series The Secret Life of Plants (2001-02). The museum entrance introduces a new site-specific installation Work in Progress (2006) created for this space, a colossal sky map painting 15 meters high whose dizzying verticality corresponds with Gehry’s spectacular atrium. The presentation continues on the first and second floors, where it is divided into an enfilade of single galleries or chapters, dedicated to discrete but interrelated bodies of works, memories, and ideas illustrating the artist’s research, offering a visual and emotional impact typical of Kiefer’s work.

Kiefer’s references are historically, culturally, and geographically diverse. He engages with specific points and moments in history to address universal themes and concerns that begin to overlap and bleed into one another. The exhibition highlights Kiefer’s diverse literary and poetic inspirations, from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) to the writings of Paul Celan (1920-1970) and Jean Genet (1910-1986) and the music of Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Through these figures, Kiefer’s paintings become interwoven with architecture in order to confront issues of nature, science, religion, and history.

One gallery presents For Khlebnikov (2004), a series of paintings dedicated to the visionary Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov (1855-1922). Kiefer’s pictures relate to Khlebnikov’s idea that cataclysmic sea battles happen every 317 years. In these works Kiefer has reproduced World War II battleships, which now float on air rather than water, while the accompanying writing refers to famous battleships, wars, and military figures, re-enacting Khlebnikov’s cyclical pattern of history over and over again. Science and destiny are also the subjects of Kiefer’s paintings inspired by Jaipur, a unique city in India that the artist visited. These include works dotted with constellations based on the instruments, sundials, and observatories built to observe the firmament by the Indian Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II (1688-1743), a notable mathematician and astronomer.

Particular attention is given to Kiefer’s exploration into the fragments of history. This takes the form of a dialogue between archaic architecture, colossal cement shattered staircases, and pictorial representation of ancient ruins in Only with Wind, Time, and Sound (1997), which explores spiritual yearning. The theme of combined religions is also examined in Chevirat Ha-Kelim, a poignant ensemble of monumental arched works, created originally for the altarpieces of the hospital chapel of the psychiatric center La Salpêtrière in Paris, it refers to the Kabbala, mystical teachings based on an esoteric interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures.

Kiefer examines two different historical periods in this exhibition through bodies of work emphasizing the female identity and experience. The Women of the Revolution (1992), a series inspired by Jules Michelet’s (1798-1874) book of the same title and comprised of lead beds with photographs and writings scrawled on the wall, evokes major feminine personalities of the French Revolution. In Women of Antiquity (2000-2004), headless mannequins in white crinoline dresses represent mythological and historical figures from antiquity. Some of these women are heroines, and some villains, but all are remarkable for their strength and determination. Other famous historical figures Kiefer depicts include Berenice, Princess of Egypt from the third century BC, whose hair, legend has it, became a constellation.

Kiefer’s meditations on nature and science continue in The Secret Life of Plants, a frieze of 28 paintings comprising branches, lead, and wire. The title of these pieces is from a book by Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird, first published in 1973, which explored the sentience of plants and proposed that they may be able to provide answers to the mysteries of the world.

Pursuing his life-long preoccupation with books, Kiefer’s For Paul Celan (2006) is composed of massive and defiant lead books pierced by flowers, ancient symbols of both fertility and the transience of life, which pay homage to the Jewish Romanian poet and essayist Celan, who miraculously survived the Holocaust. Celan shares many of the same themes and concerns as Kiefer — a sense of mourning and melancholy, and the importance of preserving memory as a means of coming to terms with the traumas of human history.

By examining these key themes and inspirations of the artist’s practice within the dynamic spaces of the Frank Gehry building, Anselm Kiefer translates these works into operatic moments of extreme power, where painting becomes interwoven with architecture to create a mythical dimension of art as a personal and collective force.