Van Gogh and Stedelijk Museums Unite for Anselm Kiefer

At Van Gogh Museum, the German artist's recent work will feature alongside Vincent van Gogh's paintings, while Stedelijk Museum will showcase a selection his early work from its collection.

Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam have announced the details of Anselm Kiefer's upcoming exhibition, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind (Tell Me Where the Flowers Are), which will span both institutions from 7 March to 9 June 2025.

The exhibition will showcase both new works and selections from the Stedelijk Museum's collection—including paintings, installations, film, and works on paper—brought together through a collaboration that highlights Kiefer's ties to both Van Gogh and the two museums.

'This is the very first time our museums have worked together on one exhibition,' Emilie Gordenker, Director of Van Gogh Museum, told the press. 'It's more than just an exchange of loans; it's a true collaboration—one exhibition, one ticket, two museums, and, as it were, a diptych.'

At Van Gogh Museum, Kiefer's work will be shown alongside seven of the Dutch painter's masterpieces, including Wheatfield With Crows (1890), emphasising the artist's influence on Kiefer's themes and techniques.

As a teenager, Kiefer retraced Van Gogh's journey from the Netherlands to Belgium, Paris, and Arles in Southern France, documenting his travels in a diary and sketches that will feature in the exhibition.

'What stands out when you see Kiefer's work in the museum is the monumental scale of his works,' said Edwin Becker, Chief Curator at Van Gogh Museum. 'They are vast landscapes, panoramic, much like Van Gogh's later works, though on a much larger scale.'

Stedelijk Museum, which acquired works by Kiefer early in his career, including Innenraum (1981) and Märkischer Sand (1982), will display his work from the 1980s alongside more recent creations.

The exhibition's centrepiece, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind (2024), is a near-24-metre-long painting, displayed around the museum's historic staircase. Currently being finalised, the work combines paint, clay, uniforms, dried rose petals, and gold—elements rich with symbolism in Kiefer's practice.

Clay and uniforms evoke the remnants of war, reflecting Kiefer's engagement with Germany's past. Dried rose petals and gold suggest fragility, beauty, and transcendence, tying to the themes of loss and regeneration present in the exhibition's title, which references Pete Seeger's 1955 protest song 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone'. —[O]