Anselm Kiefer - Life and work

Avant-garde artist, born in Donaueschingen, SW Germany. He began law studies at the University of Freiburg but left to pursue a career in art. A pupil of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf, he makes ‘books’ from photographs or woodcuts, sometimes cut or worked over. Some critics have seen ‘Fascist’, others mediaeval or Nordic, symbolism in his work. During the 1970s he painted a series of landscapes portraying a sombre German countryside. His later works display unusual textures and incorporate references to ancient Hebrew and Egyptian history.

This article should be translated from material at de:Anselm Kiefer.

Anselm Kiefer (born March 8, 1945, Donaueschingen) is a German painter and sculptor. His works incorporate materials like straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac.

Kiefer ranks among the most well-known and most successful, but also most disputed German artists after World War II. 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 particularly reflected in his work; Polemical discussions in the media over the value of his artistic work have taken place for many decades.

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 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 humans, legendary figures or places particularly pregnant with history in nearly all of his paintings.

Life and work

In 1951 he moved to Ottersdorf and attended grammar school in Rastatt.

By 1970 while studying under the tutelage of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, his stylistic leanings resembled Georg Baselitz' approach. The fragility of his work is contrasted against the stark subject matter in his paintings. He went on expanded journeys throughout Europe, USA and the middle east, in which the latter two journeys further influenced his work.

By the 1980s, Kiefer’s themes widened from a focus on Germany's role in civilization to the fate of art and culture in general. His work became more sculptural and involves not only national identity and collective memory, but also occult symbolism, theology and mysticism. The theme of all the work is the trauma experienced by entire societies, and the continual rebirth and renewal in life. 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 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. 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."

Since 1992 he established in Barjac, France and transformed his 35-hectare studio compound La Ribaute into a Gesamtkunstwerk, which can literally be entered.

From 1995 to 2001, Kiefer started a cycle of large paintings of the cosmos.

The builder and arts patron Hans Grothe will present 30 to 50 of the artist's works in the yet-to-be-constructed Anselm Kiefer Museum near the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin in 2007.