ANSELM KIEFER

Representing Germany at the 1980 Venice Biennale, Kiefer's controversial yet poetic exploration of national identity and collective trauma positioned him as a major voice in global contemporary art.

Early Years

Kiefer was born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest region of Germany, in the final months of World War II. Growing up amidst the physical and psychological aftermath of the war profoundly shaped his artistic sensibility. He enrolled at the University of Freiburg in 1965, initially to study law and Romance languages. He later switched to art and studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe from 1966 to 1969.

In 1970, Kiefer became a student of conceptual artist Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Beuys' emphasis on myth and ritual as artistic materials deeply influenced Kiefer's evolving practice. He currently lives and works in France.

Anselm Kiefer Artworks

Kiefer's artworks are expansive, textured compositions that use unconventional materials such as lead, ash, straw, clay, and shellac. These raw and alchemical substances imbue his works with a sense of decay and transformation. He engages with themes such as the Holocaust, Norse and Christian mythology, alchemy, and German Romanticism—creating dense, often somber, visual narratives.

Early Works: Confronting Post-War Identity

In the wake of World War II, Kiefer's early works confronted German history head-on. Occupations (1969) comprised staged photographs of the artist performing the Nazi salute in public settings—a deliberate provocation aimed at breaking national silence around the Holocaust.

Throughout the 1970s, paintings such as Heroic Symbols (1970), Nero Paints (1974), and Varus (1976) used ruinous landscapes and mythic references to unearth suppressed cultural memory. Margarete (1981), one of Kiefer's most widely discussed works, references Paul Celan's poem Death Fugue, contrasting the "golden hair" of a Nazi ideal with a surface embedded with straw—standing for absence, destruction, and grief.

Later Works: Myth, Cosmos, and Literature

From the 1990s onwards, Kiefer's focus expanded to broader mythological and metaphysical narratives. Works like The Orders of the Night (1996) and Palm Sunday (2006) turn toward the cosmos, invoking cycles of death and spiritual rebirth. Literary influence also deepened—particularly the writings of Paul Celan and James Joyce. Joyce's Finnegans Wake and its dense, cyclical structure resonate throughout Kiefer's oeuvre, especially in installations that layer history and time like geological strata.

What is Anselm Kiefer's most important artwork?

While Kiefer's importance lies in his sustained body of work rather than a single piece, The Seven Heavenly Palaces (2004) is widely considered a defining achievement. Towering and austere, it fuses architecture, mysticism, and materiality on an epic scale, encapsulating his lifelong themes of ruin, transcendence, and memory. Other pivotal works include Margarete (1981), For Paul Celan (2006–2007), and Ages of the World (2014)—each demonstrating his ability to transform material into metaphor.

What materials does Anselm Kiefer work in?

Kiefer is known for his radical use of materials—often choosing elemental, symbolic, or degradable substances. Lead is a recurring medium, symbolising weight, alchemical transformation, and history. Straw, ash, and burnt wood suggest cycles of life and death. Many works feature crumbling books, charred branches, or concrete towers. These tactile, layered materials are as integral to the meaning of the works as their imagery.

Anselm Kiefer Exhibitions

Keifer's work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in institutions, including:

Solo Exhibitions

• Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2025)
• Anselm Kiefer, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2021)
• Anselm Kiefer: For Paul Celan, The Met Breuer, New York (2019)
• Anselm Kiefer, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015)
• Il Mistero delle Cattedrali, Palazzo Ducale, Venice (2011)
• Anselm Kiefer, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2007)
• Anselm Kiefer, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1987)

Group Exhibitions

• NEU – Polke, Kiefer, Baselitz, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark (2024)
• Proof of Life, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen, Germany (2018)
• Dioramas, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017)
• Germany Divided: Baselitz and his Generation, British Museum, London (2014)
• Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930–45, Hayward Gallery, London (1996)
• An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1984)
• German Art in the 20th Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1985)
• A New Spirit in Painting, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1981)
• Documenta 7, Kassel (1982)
• Documenta 6, Kassel (1977)

Critical Reception

Kiefer's practice has been widely covered in international media including __The Guardian, The Art Newspaper, and The New York Times.

Ocula | 2025