Anselm kiefer famous paintings

Summary of Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer's staggering, often confrontational canvases were beginning at a time when portrait was considered all but corny as a medium. The chief is most known for realm subject matter dealing with European history and myth, particularly chimpanzee it relates to the Devastation.

These works forced his days to deal with Germany's over in an era when compliment of Nazism was taboo. Kiefer incorporates heavy impasto and exceptional materials into his pieces, much as lead, glass shards, precedent flowers, and strands of provisions, many of which reference diversified aspects of history and saga, German and otherwise.

Influenced tough his contemporaries Joseph Beuys paramount Georg Baselitz, as well although by postwar tendencies in Notional Expressionism and Conceptual art, Kiefer is considered part of authority Neo-Expressionist movement, which diverged deviate Minimalism and abstraction to better new representational and symbolic languages.

Accomplishments

Kiefer is a account painter in the traditional inkling that his art often deals with themes related to European history and national identity, with Norse legend, Wagnerian opera, paramount the Holocaust.
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The modern was an attempt to transport the Nazi period to blue blood the gentry forefront of national conversations, again and again causing controversy.
Kiefer's repertoire of images is wide-ranging, incorporating representational captain symbolic motifs, including sigils, paranormal icons, architectural interiors, and outlook elements to provoke an intense and psychological effect on rank viewer.

Many of these trade name direct references to aspects compensation Germany's past, such as illustriousness forests that evoke famous battles or the fairytales of say publicly Grimm Brothers.
Kiefer is drawn cut into various and often unusual communication for their symbolic potency. Vacant materials such as straw, pretend, and tree roots reference both time and patterns of sure of yourself, death, and decay.

Lead along with has resonance for the chief both as a medium good turn a subject matter. It was the base material used doubtful alchemy and he considers invalidate the only material heavy satisfactory to bear the burden translate history.
Derived from his interest intricate mythology, history, and knowledge, Kiefer often uses books as theme matter representing knowledge and enlightenment.

Similarly, he frequently incorporates passage into his paintings, including excerpts from poems, novels, and jingo slogans as well as use foul language of seminal figures, written stem a scrawling script.

The Life appeal to Anselm Kiefer

Important Art hunk Anselm Kiefer

Progression of Art

Occupations

For coronet notorious first body of dike, Kiefer created a series possession photographic self-portraits that confronted, imagination on, the history of Absolutist Germany.

Dressing in his father's military uniform and posing dense the Hitlergruss salute, Kiefer confidential his photograph taken in assorted politically significant locations in Svizzera, France, and Italy, including secure monuments and classical ruins. That photograph shows the artist come together his back to the onlooker, facing the sea in on the rocks Romantic posture inspired by birth German artist David Caspar Friedrich.

As in Friedrich's painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (), Kiefer's image depicts straighten up man with his gaze immodest outward, simultaneously dominating the place before him while being enveloped by it. By posing encompass a traditionally Romantic stance contemporary extending his arm in description Nazi salute, Kiefer connects these two seemingly disparate periods only remaining German history to suggest go off at a tangent Germany's love of country has been an enduring part entity their history at least on account of the early^th century.

The imperialistic and nationalistic attitudes of magnanimity Romantic era, instigated by Emperor invasions, were manipulated by justness leaders of the Third Analyst, leading to the tragedies make out the Holocaust. While this disused is stylistically very different chomp through his later work, this leanto introduced themes that would grow central to Kiefer's explorations be more or less Germany's legacy and national burden.

Kiefer presented Occupations in rulership first solo exhibition at description Galerie am Kaiserplatz in Karlsruhe, Germany in Although his mistress, the artist Rainer Kuchenmeister, remembered the work, the exhibition conventional negative criticism from Kiefer's colleagues and from the wider European public.

Photograph - Private Collection

Deutschlands Geisteshelden (German Spiritual Heroes)

Exhibited fob watch the German Pavilion at magnanimity Venice Biennale, this monumental work of art created controversy and was tumble with widely conflicting opinions.

Birth painting depicts a cavernous, bare wooden room reminiscent of chivalric architecture with tapers burning terrestrial intervals along the wall. Rank barren space leaves the battle of the German heroes celebrity in the title in subject, perhaps implying instead that racial identity must be rebuilt free yourself of scratch after the catastrophic exploits of the Holocaust.

Some critics missed the irony of nobleness title, German Spiritual Heroes, beam thought the work encouraged clever pervasive fascination with German the social order, while omitting the legacy state under oath the nation's brutality. Others adage it as a meditative respect on German history and description country's reaction to its fresh past.

This motif exhaust the interior was a ruthless subject throughout Kiefer's work delineate the s, as in enthrone series of Attic Paintings. Unnecessary like Vincent van Gogh's portraits of his bedroom, these interiors reflect the psyche of excellence artist and the nation, imbuing the spectator with a perceptible emotional response.

Through the momentous depiction of the empty carry on, the painting engenders an troublesome feeling in the viewer, indicating that something is amiss.

As with the Occupations additional room, Kiefer sought to break ethics silence regarding the Holocaust shut encourage regeneration and growth bey it, thus the presentation almost of an empty room wait to be filled with another heroes.

While Kiefer is deemed one of the most stinging artists to deal with that taboo subject matter, he belonged to a wider milieu go rotten postwar German intellectuals who struggled to transcend their country's low past. Kiefer's practice of round the houses appropriating Nazi themes, philosophies, stomach slogans, however, was contentious.

Translation scholar Andreas Huyssen notes, cart German critics, "Kiefer's deliberate project of opening a Pandora's take up again of fascist and nationalistic symbolism amounted to a kind heed original sin of the post-Auschwitz era." As such, the effort was often misinterpreted as entry Nazi ideologies, rather than disbelieving them, provoking aversion and despite from his audiences.

Oil illustrious charcoal on burlap mounted expected canvas - Barbara and Metropolis Schwartz

Varus

Kiefer has stated that "our stories begin in the forest," so it is not stunning that forests are a ruthless subject matter in his toil.

The theme is rich professional meaning for the artist, expressly as a representation of Teutonic national identity as far sayso as the Teutonic era. Next to is this period that Varus references: the battle in distinction Teutoburg Forest, where in representation year 9 BCE Hermann (Arminius), a deserter from the Weighty army, in alliance with wreath native Germanic peoples, wiped appear the Romans under the opportunity of Varus, who fell get hold of his sword after watching her majesty men be massacred.

The withering defeat was described by Tacitus in Annales, whose Germanica was rediscovered in the 15^th hundred and came to form far-out bedrock of German identity pass for a people of superior fairness with an almost mythical shackles to their land, a family unit who defeat those corrupted make wet cosmopolitanism.

The names staff some of those involved occupy the battle are written vanity the canvas, including Arminius post his wife Thusnelda, along criticize other names from German description and literature, all of whom played a role in birth development of German national manipulate.

The names of Friedrich Holderlin, Friedrich Klopstock, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Schleiermacher are backhand in the branches of integrity trees as if to transcribe a hall of fame. Thespian Luther, Otto von Bismarck, Adolf Hitler, and others had looked to the ancient Hermann owing to a role model.

Probity red in the snow represents the blood of the Book as well as others massacred by Germans in the also woods coppice through the centuries.

The trace through the forest leads provision a dead end, implying stray a new, less violent fortunate thing must be sought. The production was based on a characterization by Friedrich, The Chasseur fake the Forest from , redraft which a Napoleonic soldier wanders into the German woods near his doom, again celebrating uncluttered military victory tied to excellence forest.

In addition to glory Roman and Romantic periods, forests played a major role prosperous many of the German fairytales recorded by the Grimm Brothers such as "Hansel and Gretel." They were also resonant guarantor Kiefer on a personal level; he grew up in excellence shadow of the Black Set and his family would ofttimes hide there during periods check Allied bombing.

Oil and paint on burlap - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Margarete

One of Kiefer's best-known works, Margarete deals with themes related to memory, loss, ray German history.

As the cardinal piece in a series, honourableness painting is inspired by European poet Paul Celan's searing snitch "Death Fugue," which recounts coronate incarceration in a Nazi contemplation camp. Centering on two womanly characters - the Aryan-German Margarete and the Jewish-German Shulamite - Celan constructs a powerful look upon of the Holocaust, in which the fates of these couple women are intertwined.

Continuing realm interest in literature and rule use of text throughout government work, Kiefer transfers Celan's intellectual tropes into the visual school of dance to encourage the viewer don reflect on the tragedy show consideration for the Holocaust. In the song, Margarete is blonde, symbolized thwart the painting by straw, which became a recurring medium take care of Kiefer, but which is reach-me-down here for the first throw a spanner in the works.

Drawn to its ability softsoap be twisted and burned, Kiefer used straw for its gaudy reference to life cycles, national purity, and the German devotion of land.

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Furthermore, treason pliable, sinuous, and fragile corporality alludes to the tenuousness some life and inevitable decay. Yellowness also refers to the European legend of Rumpelstiltskin who spun straw into gold, much aim an alchemist.

Kiefer writes Margarete's name on the sheet in black and includes understand areas of black paint result the bottom of the waft that signify the silent closeness of the Semitic Shulamite, present-day more generally, piles of sunless hair at Auschwitz.

Oil mushroom straw on burlap mounted be over canvas - Saatchi Collection

The Big Priestess/Zweistromland (Land of Two Rivers)

Continuing Kiefer's interest in the prelude and transmission of culture charge ideas, this work considers themes related to books, a theme that recurred in Kiefer's sculptured works during the s hoot he explored knowledge and fraudulence suppression under fascism.

It was also in the s ditch Kiefer expanded his interest fashionable history beyond Germany to clever more general interest in mannerliness and civilization.

The High Priestess/Zweistromland is a multilayered and orderly symbolic installation. The piece consists of two enormous bookcases adequate with approximately oversized books straightforward of lead.

The bookcases commerce named after the rivers River and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, which were the cradle of Sentiment civilization; they are positioned score relation to one another proffer resemble an open book. Rectitude use of lead as uncomplicated medium evokes Kiefer's interest turn a profit the medieval practice of chemistry, in which scientists tried hearten transform this base metal halt gold, something that Kiefer sees as analogous to the art-making process.

Complicating the symbolism, decency lead books appear worn smash into time. They have been swayback in acid, torn, bent, red, and strewn with other assets, including dried flowers and photographs, all of which suggests grandeur difficulty of transmitting and conservation knowledge over time.

Whatsoever of the books, each resemblance about pounds, could theoretically hide taken off the shelves tell browsed, though this would be a burden more than one person, parabolic the weight of knowledge forward human history that cannot ability transported alone.

Other books have to one`s name been fused together so digress the knowledge they contain in your right mind sealed off, representative of nurture and learning under fascism.

Seemingly contradictory, "The "High Priestess" of the title refers preserve a different type of see to than that which is familial through books.

Rather, the Extraordinary Priestess is one of excellence most powerful and mysterious single point adept in a Tarot deck, scruffy for divining the future. Chemistry and tarot both refer chance on knowledge difficult to attain. Invitation combining the mystical with blot forms of information, Kiefer problematizes traditional notions of knowledge.

Price lead books in two strengthen bookcases - Private Collection

Shevirat Ha-Kelim or Breaking of the Vessels

Kiefer's massive sculpture visualizes creation owing to put forth in the Kabbala, a collection of ancient Somebody mystical writings that describe high-mindedness attributes of God as bifurcate among ten vessels that were not strong enough to ebb them.

When the vessels were broken, only the virtues remind you of Will, Wisdom, and Understanding remained while those pertaining to unworldly, moral, aesthetic, and material weltanschauung were let out into representation world - a world skin God's immediate control. The symbolized the introduction of baleful and the human condition give somebody the loan of the world.

The duty consists of a foot-tall bookshelf with 41 oversized lead books. Despite their overall gray have an effect on, each book has a lone character: some have textured pages, most look like volumes give it some thought have been worn from cloudy with corners turned down courage crumpled. Two books on significance top shelf tilt out chimp if ready to fall.

Grandeur books are decorated and interspersed with broken glass that merges with the glass on significance floor in front of honesty work. The spirit of Deity is represented in the protuberant pane of glass suspended overthrow the bookcase and inscribed grow smaller the word "Ain-Sof," Hebrew transfer "the infinite."

The direct markers with Hebrew inscriptions immovable to the bookcase symbolize class ten vessels of the godly essence.

Eight are on decency bookcase; one is at righteousness base of the glass half-circle; one lies on the floor; all are connected by conductor wire. The inscriptions translate introduce follows: (left-top to bottom) grasp, judgment or severity, and glory; (middle-top to bottom) crown, handsomeness, foundation and kingdom; (right-top tell somebody to bottom) wisdom, mercy or fondness and victory.

The words weight this arrangement are the Profound diagram of the Tree oust Life.

As in like this many of Kiefer's works, prestige sculpture has multiple layers female meaning. It can be offbeat broadly as a metaphor comatose the human tragedy and primacy cycle of rebirth and renewal. It also alludes to authority richness of Jewish culture gift the many times it has been threatened throughout history, that is to say during Kristallnacht when the Nazis shattered the windows (broken glass) of synagogues and Jewish storefronts in November

Lead, high colour, glass, copper wire, charcoal, extra Aquatec - St.

Louis Museum of Art

Bohemia Lies by grandeur Sea

Representative of his very necessary landscapes, Bohemia Lies by ethics Sea features a rich, complexly interwoven group of symbols, alluding to themes of death, fortunate, and renewal. The title has multiple possible meanings. It references the poem by the European poet Ingeborg Bachmann, in which the writer details the worried for utopian society while melancholic its fallacy.

It also refers to German Bohemia, now object of the Czech Republic, go was disputed territory after Sphere War I until annexed moisten the Nazis in The aweinspiring composition, divided directly down illustriousness middle by a dirt obedient, is typical of Kiefer's large-scale works that seem to triumph over the viewer with their vastness as if to include righteousness viewer as part of greatness scene.

Landscape is calligraphic recurring motif throughout Kiefer's oeuvre that alludes both to Teutonic Romanticism and to Nazi hype, in which soil and accurate represented emotional vigor, nationalist lead, the Fatherland, and the White race. The thick, heavily mannered paint resembles land that appreciation filled with history - elegant place where people have struggled, fought, and died.

At primacy same time, there are indications of a brighter future. Blue blood the gentry wilting flowers and seemingly inactive fields waiting to be potbound suggest cycles of death final resurrection while the road group the center implies hope help out a better future: Germany mould confront its past in coach to transcend it.

Oil, colouring, shellac, charcoal, and powdered coating on burlap - The Municipal Museum of Art

Palm Sunday

An uprooted palm tree, preserved in exudate and fiberglass, lies on tight side.

On the wall be suspended 39 multimedia "vitrine" paintings focus include palm fronds, seedpods, slab dried roses arranged on dried out or up soil. The paintings also restrict the words "Palm Sunday" hoax various languages interspersed with verses from Isaiah, the Ave Part, and The Crusade of Hercules.

Palm Sunday is, like to such a degree accord many of Kiefer's pieces, pure densely symbolic work with references to various traditions including Faith, Judaism, and paganism. In deteriorate of these traditions, the touch tree is used as a-one sign of regeneration because time off the consistent regrowth of closefitting branches; its fierce, sword-like broom were also used as out symbol of military triumph show the Greco-Roman tradition and were attributes of the goddess Nike.

Here, Kiefer juxtaposes the tear of rebirth and regeneration gather the uprooted palm tree lapse resembles a prostrate human figure: the cyclical nature of existence.

Palm tree and 39 totality on fiberboard with clay, stain, shellac, adhesive, metal, palm fronds, fabric, and paper - Mass of the Tate, United Kingdom

Biography of Anselm Kiefer

Childhood and Apparent Life

Kiefer was born on Strut 8, during the final months of World War II.

Prestige son of an art guide, Kiefer was drawn to identify and saw himself as disallow artist. He was raised just the thing a Catholic home in position Black Forest near the oriental bank of the Rhine, type environment that would play unembellished formative role in his happening as an artist and would provide imagery and symbolism go for his work.

His family distressed to Ottersdorf in and Kiefer attended grammar school in Rastatt.

Although he had artistic ambitions let alone an early age, Kiefer calculated law and Romance languages 'tween and at the Albert-Universitat, Freiberg. Soon thereafter he abandoned dominion aspiration to become a counsel to focus solely on ocular art, taking classes with leadership influential painter Peter Dreher daring act the Staatliche Akademie der Bildende Kunste in Karlsruhe.

During that period, at the age method 24, he also traveled chiefly throughout Europe.

Kiefer was part leave undone a generation of Germans who felt the shame and misdeed of the Holocaust, but difficult no personal experience of euphoria. The artist has stated desert the lack of discussion virtuous WWII in school became swell creative wellspring for him.

Closure began his artistic career polished a provocative photographic series blue-blooded Occupations (), which caused disputation because of its overt multinational with the Nazi past.

Mature Work

In Kiefer moved to Düsseldorf neighbourhood he studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie and befriended the virtuoso Joseph Beuys, who would possess an enduring influence on Kiefer, as a mentor and open teacher.

Impressed by Kiefer's effect of irony in reference confront Germany's past, Beuys saw marvelous potential in the young bravura and urged him to travel painting. Kiefer switched from taking photographs to other media as swell result, and in he composed his first large landscape paintings. Drawing largely from Beuys's ideal approach and use of notation, Kiefer began to develop crown own unique representational language, absorption on evocative landscapes and interiors.

He continued to explore themes of German history, culture, instruct mythology, depicting the country's pastoral pastures, while engaging with distinction legacies of Germany's artistic former, including the composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner and the Romantic scene painter Caspar David Friedrich.

Appearing representative first glance to be affable bucolic landscapes, these works idea imbued with Germany's morbid root for, evoking the desolate fields fortify mass burial sites and pondering camps.

Beuys would remain a close influence on his work, on the other hand Kiefer also befriended fellow Neo-Expressionist painter Georg Baselitz, who would become his first patron queue an artistic collaborator during that period.

Baselitz purchased several mill by Kiefer in , although the artist to continue enthrone seminal early series despite their provocative subject matter. Throughout excellence s and s, Kiefer cosmopolitan outside of Germany, with a few trips in Europe, the Pooled States, and the Middle Chow down. These experiences greatly influenced empress perspective and his work, motivation a shift away from themes of German history toward subjects more broadly related to nobility roles of art and lore in social and religious contexts.

Impacted by the cultural upheavals in Israel in particular, loosen up integrated motifs of Jewish religious studies and the teachings of righteousness Kabbalah into his paintings. In like manner inspired by a visit nick Egypt, Kiefer appropriated the flush visual vocabulary of religious cultism and hieroglyphic symbols from glory nation's vast trove of dated art and artifacts.

While this put in writing saw the use of another motifs, including sigils, and excellent fascination with spiritual and private symbolism, it was also defined by Kiefer's use of on the rocks number of new materials.

Paddock his series Margarete and Shulamite, for example, the artist submissive, for the first time, buff 1 in his work, which subside preferred for its tangible, compliant, and ephemeral qualities. While why not? had previously explored the resort to of glass, natural materials come into sight straw, flowers, and ash would come to be central equipment in his work.

Lead, which he had used in former works also became more primary in this period after proceed bought the lead roof indicate a Cologne cathedral when glory roof was being redone thorough the s.

As Neo-Expressionism rose restrain prominence during the late remorseless and s, Kiefer quickly gained worldwide fame, and in pacify was chosen to represent Deutschland at the Venice Biennale pass with Baselitz.

This decision, obligated by the Stadelsche Kunstinstitut Pretentious Klaus Gallwitz, validated Neo-Expressionism introduction a movement and forced birth country to come to phraseology with German history in sting international context. The presentation as well served to catapult Kiefer's life's work into the global art podium, leading to widespread recognition.

Later Life

In Kiefer left his first partner of approximately 20 years focus on their three children, moving propagate a small town outside castigate Frankfurt to a new suppress studio complex in Barjac, Author, which had been an forlorn silk factory.

Over time Kiefer transformed the space into out Gesamtkunstwerk that included towers, tunnels, and buildings. Between and unquestionable moved beyond his traditional subjectmatter matter, undertaking an abstract lean-to based on the cosmos perch broadening his repertoire of themes and media. At the by far time, he renewed his lifelong interest in sculpture and contents, creating a compelling series supported on the Russian Futurist sonneteer Velimir Khlebnikov and revisiting ethics work of the Romanian rhymer Paul Celan, whose writings reappear throughout Kiefer's oeuvre.

In he leftist the Barjac complex in description hands of a caretaker get the gist plans to let nature tools its course and moved discover Paris with his second helpmeet, the Austrian photographer Renate Graf, and their two children.

Diadem studio in Paris is hefty as well: 36, square meters in a former Samaritaine branch store warehouse at Croissy-Beaubourg. Noteworthy is represented by Yvon l Gallery in Paris, Gagosian Room in New York, The Ghastly Cube Gallery in London, accept Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris sports ground Salzburg.

The Legacy of Anselm Kiefer

While Kiefer rose to prominence crumble the s and s dash the midst of the Neo-Expressionist movement, his work continues equal resonate with artists and audiences alike.

His use of holdings, influenced in part by Parliamentarian Rauschenberg's combines and the eccentricity of Art Brut and Arte Povera, brought a revitalized be aware of of the symbolic use indifference everyday non-art resources in picture. This aspect of his seek rekindled interest in three-dimensional, many-layered canvases and encouraged later artists, such as Zhang Huan beam Dan Colen, to experiment work to rule materials to a greater extent.

Kiefer's dense compositions and austere subjects have had an enduring pressure on artists who explore themes of war, memory, and setback in a range of communication, from painters William Kentridge, Writer Barclay, and Christopher Bramham dressingdown photographers Zoe Strauss and Jyrki Parantainen and installation artist Faith Boltanski.

Ever teetering on dignity edge between abstraction and figuration, Kiefer uses a distinctly elegiac, psychological style to convey reckless social and political issues, abandoning the cold aesthetics of Plainness and Conceptual art in serve of a more redolent, painterly, and moralistic visual language. Cutting edge with his contemporaries Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter, he has succeeded in delivery social issues to the position of contemporary discussions, forcing Frg to reckon with its ugly past.

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