Anselm Kiefer facts for kids

Grane (1980-1993), Woodcut with paint and collage on paper mounted on linen, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a famous German painter and sculptor. He is known for using unusual materials in his art, like straw, ash, clay, lead, and a type of varnish called shellac.

Kiefer's art often explores difficult parts of history, especially from Nazi rule and the terrible events of the Holocaust. He uses his art to make people think about the past. For example, his painting Margarete was inspired by a poem about the Holocaust.

His artworks are usually very large. They show his willingness to face his culture's dark history. You might also find hidden names or historical places in his art. These are like secret codes that help Kiefer understand the past. His style is sometimes called Neo–Expressionism, which means it's about expressing strong feelings.

Anselm Kiefer has lived and worked in France since 1992. Since 2008, he has mainly worked in Paris. In 2018, he also became an Austrian citizen.

About Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany, just a few months before World War II ended. His city was heavily bombed, so he grew up seeing the destruction of war.

He first studied law and languages at the University of Freiburg. But after a while, he decided to switch to art. He studied at art schools in Freiburg and Karlsruhe, graduating in 1969.

In 1971, Kiefer set up his first art studio in Hornbach, Germany. He worked there until 1992. This period is known as The German Years of his art. In 1992, he moved to France.

In 2017, Kiefer was listed as one of the wealthiest people in Germany by a business magazine. A 3D documentary film about him, called Anselm, was released in 2023. It was directed by Wim Wenders.

How Kiefer Creates Art

Kiefer often gets ideas from old stories, books, and libraries. In his earlier years, writers like Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann inspired him. Later, his art included ideas from different cultures, like Judeo-Christian, ancient Egyptian, and Oriental stories. He also explores how the universe began.

Kiefer tries to find the meaning of life and show things that are hard to understand.

His Artistic Ideas

Kiefer believes in having a "spiritual connection" with the materials he uses. He feels like he is "pulling out the spirit that already lives within" them. He sometimes changes his materials using acid or hitting them with sticks and axes.

He often chooses materials for their special properties, especially lead. Kiefer first became interested in lead when he had to fix old pipes in his house. He liked how it looked and felt. He also learned about its connection to alchemy, which is an old practice of trying to turn ordinary metals into gold.

Kiefer likes how lead looks when it's heated and melted, showing many colors, especially gold. He connects this to the symbolic gold that alchemists searched for.

Kiefer uses straw in his art to represent energy. He says this is because straw is golden in color and releases energy when it burns. The ash that is left behind can then lead to new creations. This shows his interest in change and the cycle of life.

Kiefer also thinks about the balance between order and chaos in his art. He says, "If there is too much order, [the piece] is dead; or if there is much chaos, it doesn't cohere." He also cares a lot about where his artworks are displayed. He believes they "lose their power completely" if they are in the wrong place.

Kiefer's Artworks

Faith, Hope, Love by Anselm Kiefer, Art Gallery of New South Wales

Photography and Performances

Kiefer started his career by creating performances and taking photos of them. In one series, he dressed in his father's old army uniform and made a gesture similar to the Nazi salute in different places in Europe. He wanted Germans to remember their past and the damage caused by the Third Reich. In 1969, he showed these photos in his first art show.

Paintings and Sculptures

Kiefer is most famous for his paintings. They have become very large and often include materials like lead, broken glass, and dried plants. This makes the surfaces rough and thick with layers of paint.

Around 1970, he studied with artist Joseph Beuys. Kiefer started using materials like glass, straw, wood, and plant parts. He wanted to show these materials in their natural form, even if it made his art fragile. This idea of using everyday materials to express ideas was influenced by Beuys. It is also typical of the Neo-Expressionist art style.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Kiefer often used German myths in his work. He also studied Kabbalah, which is a spiritual tradition. He traveled a lot, and his journeys influenced his art. Besides paintings, he made sculptures, watercolors, photos, and woodcuts. He often reused figures from his woodcuts in other artworks.

Many of his works from the 1970s and early 1980s were inspired by Richard Wagner's operas. He also made paintings that referred to Paul Celan's poem "Death Fugue," which is about the Holocaust.

Some of his paintings from 1980 to 1983 show large stone buildings. These refer to famous Nazi buildings designed by architects like Albert Speer. For example, the painting To the Unknown Painter (1983) shows a grand courtyard similar to one in Hitler's office building.

By the mid-1980s, Kiefer's art began to explore bigger ideas. He looked at the future of art and culture in general. His work became more like sculptures and included ideas from occult symbolism, religion, and mysticism. A main idea in all his work is the pain that societies go through and how life keeps being reborn and renewed.

His paintings in the 1980s became more physical, with unusual textures and materials. He started including references to ancient Hebrew and Egyptian history, like in the large painting Osiris and Isis (1985–87). In the 1990s, his paintings explored universal myths about life and meaning. From 1995 to 2001, he created a series of large paintings about the cosmos.

Since 2002, Kiefer has worked with concrete. He created towers for warehouses in Milan and a series of artworks honoring the Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov. These works show the sea with boats and lead objects. He also returned to the work of Paul Celan with paintings that have ancient symbols called runes.

In 2007, Kiefer became the first artist in 50 years to be asked to create a permanent artwork at the Louvre museum in Paris. The same year, he opened the Monumenta exhibitions in Paris with works honoring poets Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann.

In 2009, Kiefer had two shows in London. One series of artworks showed forests inside glass boxes, many filled with Moroccan thorns. Another series, The Fertile Crescent, included large paintings inspired by a trip to India. These paintings connected ancient civilizations to the ruins of Germany after the Second World War.

In 2012, Kiefer filled a gallery with a sculpture of a golden wheat field inside a tall steel cage. He continues to show his monumental new works in galleries around the world.

Art Books

In 1969, Kiefer started making art books. His early books often used photos that he had changed. His newer books are made of lead sheets layered with paint, minerals, or dried plants. He has created many lead books on steel shelves, which represent the knowledge of history that is stored and sometimes forgotten.

One book, Rhine (1981), has 25 woodcuts that show a journey along the Rhine River. This river is very important to Germany's history. The peaceful river scenes in the book are interrupted by dark, swirling pages that represent the sinking of a German battleship during World War II.

Art Studios

Kiefer's first big studio was in the attic of his home, an old schoolhouse. Later, he used a factory building as his studio. In 1988, he turned a former brick factory into a huge artwork with many installations and sculptures.

In 1991, after working in Germany for twenty years, Kiefer traveled around the world. In 1992, he settled in Barjac, France. There, he turned a large silk factory into an enormous art space. He built glass buildings, archives, and underground rooms and tunnels.

A documentary film called Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010) showed Kiefer's studio complex in Barjac and the artist at work. It showed miles of corridors, huge studio spaces, and large sculptures.

In 2008, Kiefer moved from Barjac to Paris. A large number of trucks moved his artworks to a huge warehouse outside Paris. He left his Barjac studio complex behind. It is now looked after by a caretaker, waiting for nature to slowly take over.

Exhibitions

Opening of the Exhibitions "Shevirat Ha-Kelim" (Breaking of the Vessels) at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1 November 2011

In 1969, Kiefer had his first solo art show in Karlsruhe. He represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1980 and again in 1997.

Many museums around the world have shown Kiefer's work. These include the Art Institute of Chicago (1987), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1998), and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2007). In 2014, the Royal Academy of Arts in London held the first major show of his work in Britain.

In 2007, Kiefer was asked to create a huge art installation for the Grand Palais in Paris. The same year, he became the first living artist since 1953 to create a permanent artwork at the Louvre museum in Paris.

In 2008, Kiefer installed a large artwork called Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday) in a church in Los Angeles. It included a huge palm tree and 36 steel-and-glass tablets. In 2010, this artwork was shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

In 2013, the Hall Art Foundation opened a long-term display of Kiefer's sculptures and paintings at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. This included a long, wavy concrete sculpture and lead beds with photographs.

In 2015, major museums in Paris and Leipzig held special exhibitions to celebrate Kiefer's 70th birthday. In 2018, he created his first public artwork in the United States, a sculpture called Uraeus at Rockefeller Center in New York.

Awards and Recognition

Anselm Kiefer has received many important awards for his art.

In 1990, he won the Wolf Prize. In 1999, he was given the Praemium Imperiale by the Japan Art Association for his life's work. The award recognized how his art deals with history. It noted that Kiefer believed art could help heal a country and a world that had been hurt. He created huge paintings that explored German culture and history.

In 2008, Kiefer was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. This was the first time a visual artist received this award. The art historian Werner Spies said that Kiefer is a passionate reader who gets ideas for his art from books. In 2011, Kiefer was given a special teaching position in art at the Collège de France.

Materials Used in Art

Because of how Kiefer creates his art, some of his works can change over time. He knows this happens, but he believes change is part of the art process. He thinks the main idea of the artwork will stay the same. This idea of change is important to Kiefer and appears in many of his works. This interest might come from his fascination with alchemy.

He often chooses materials for their special properties. Lead is one of his favorites. He likes how lead looks when it's heated and melted, showing many colors, especially gold. He connects this to the symbolic gold that alchemists searched for. He also likes how lead turns white when it oxidizes, and he sometimes uses acid to make this happen faster. Lead was also linked to old ideas about magic and the planet Saturn.

Shellac, another material he uses, is similar to lead in how he feels about its color and energy. He also likes that it becomes warm when polished.

Using straw in his art also relates to the idea of energy. Straw is golden and gives off energy and heat when burned. The ash that is left behind can then lead to new creations. This continues the cycle of life through the process of change.

Art Market

Anselm Kiefer's paintings have sold for very high prices. His best-selling painting, The Fertile Crescent (2009), sold for nearly $4 million in 2019. Before that, To the Unknown Painter (1983) sold for over $3.5 million in 2011.

Art Collections

Kiefer's artworks are part of many public art collections around the world. You can find his pieces in museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns 20 of his rare watercolors.

See Also

In Spanish: Anselm Kiefer para niños

• Holocaust memorial landscapes in Germany