He works with heavy materials and with uncomfortable truths: an Anselm Kiefer retrospective opens at the Centre Pompidou. The German artist has dealt with Germany's history and myths like no other.
Image: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich
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The mythical art of Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer called the retrospective of his works at the Centre Pompidou in Paris "the exhibition of my life." The German artist has explored the myths and abysses of his country's history like no other.
Image: JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
War and myths
He's a winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and one of the world's most successful artists. Born in Donaueschingen in 1945, the final year of the war, Anselm Kiefer has lived in France since 1993. With installations, drawings and paintings, his work revolves around German mythology and explores the impact of World War II on Germans.
Image: Anselm Kiefer/Ben Blackwell
Destruction, to create anew
Raised in a strict Catholic home, Anselm Kiefer is inspired by history, religion and mythology. His color palette is one of his trademarks. In "Resumptio" (1974), a light-blue winged figure hovers over a grave. The underlying message: painting provides the power to deal with the past.
Image: Atelier Anselm Kiefer
The aura of words
Many of Kiefer's art works refer to literature. "Margarete" (1981) plays on Paul Celan's poem "Death Fugue," a coming-to-terms of his time in a concentration camp. The poem mentions two women, Margarete and Shulamite, an Aryan and a Jew. Margarete's golden hair is not painted, but rather depicted through straw pasted onto the painting, with her name written in the background.
Image: Anselm Kiefer/Ian Reeves
History as heavy as lead
Anselm Kiefer used not only paint for his painting "Lilith" (1987-1990), but also coal, ash, hair, strips of lead and poppy. Lilith was the "first Eva," created by God using the same earth as Adam. The creature is both rebellious and melancholic. To express this, Kiefer uses lead, a material that often turns up in his work.
Image: Atelier Anselm Kiefer
Art after Auschwitz
This work, named "For Paul Celan," resembles a devastated landscape. It combines shellac varnish, ashes and burned books, among other materials. Like Celan, considered the most important poet to have dealt with Auschwitz, Kiefer has sought to explore history without getting crushed under it - developing his own pictorial language, which is both constructive and destructive.
Image: Charles Duprat
Earthy severity
"Waterloo" belongs to a series of paintings dealing with Napoleon's defeat in Belgium. The brown earth appears warm, yet fragile. Working suggestively, Anselm Kiefer offers hints that point in many directions. Those aware of his artistic approach realize that the painting references German history and the concept of "native soil" propagated in the Third Reich.
Image: Atelier Anselm Kiefer
The language of materials
Art once served alchemists. Now alchemy is often used by artists. This lead installation is named "Ouroboros," the alchemist's symbol of the snake biting its own tail - although the figure is nowhere to be found in it. Kiefer encrypts messages in his works, and viewers are left to figure out what they mean.
Image: Georges Poncet
Archaic worlds behind glass
For his Centre Pompidou retrospective, Anselm Kiefer set up 40 display cases in which he installed archaic objects: plants, stones, iron or steel - materials symbolizing both the beginning and the end of life.
Image: Georges Poncet
House-sized installations
Living in southern France - in Barjac in the Gard region - since 1993, Kiefer has built a huge studio there. Many of his installations are so large they can barely fit into a museum. For his retrospective in Paris, he chose smaller works: paintings, photos and installations spanning his entire oeuvre.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Alvarez/Editions du Regard
Archivist of German history
This is the most extensive exhibition in France of German artist Anselm Kiefer (pictured) in the past three decades. Nearly 150 works of art, including 60 major paintings, are on display, along with installations, display cases and works on paper.
Image: JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
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Winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, Anselm Kiefer deals with uncomfortable truths. He drills deep into history until it hurts. After his studies at the School of Art in Karlsruhe and at the Dusseldorf Art Academy under Joseph Beuys, he created art that expressed one of his preoccupations: Nazi history.
Kiefer was born in the Swabian town of Donaueschingen in March 1945, two months before Germany's official surrender. Carrying the heavy burden of war, he was one of the first artists to make it a central theme.
Anselm Kiefer in 2014Image: Charles Duprat
For his college thesis, Kiefer travelled through Europe and filmed himself performing the Nazi salute in public. In Germany, he was accused of being a neo-Nazi. Kiefer wanted to find out for himself the impact Nazism had on him.
Coping with history
Anselm Kiefer was the first artist of the postwar generation whose work deals with Nazi history. He made it his personal goal to find out what had happened. In schools, the topic is covered within a half year - not enough, Kiefer once said in an interview.
He wanted to find out how he would have behaved during the war. Coping with the past became one of his leitmotivs, along with exploring Germanic and ancient mythology, and later, Jewish mysticism.
'Lilith' (1987)Image: Atelier Anselm Kiefer
In the 1970s, Kiefer created a series of symbolic works: landscapes made out of burned earth or charred books, recalling the horrors and devastation of World War II.
Destructive energy and the healing power of art
Rejecting the influences of abstract expressionism, pop art and minimalism, Kiefer developed his own visual language, which was heavily influenced by his teacher Joseph Beuys. Whereas Beuys worked with fat and felt, Anselm Kiefer used lead, earth and archaic materials - whose severity adds an aura of melancholy and destructiveness to his work. At the same time, Kiefer believes in the healing power of art. Like an alchemist, he combines stones, metals and plants in his display cases. This type of installation is seen in 40 models at the Centre Pompidou exhibition.
Anselm Kiefer was first recognized in the US - whereas in 1970's Germany, it still seemed too early to confront the past in art. In 1980, Kiefer represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. He has been invited to Documenta, the world art exhibition in Kassel, three times since 1982.
Major Anselm Kiefer retrospective in Paris
The French adore the German artist, who moved to France in 1993. French museums have regularly created space to show his huge installations and paintings. But the current retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris is the most extensive Kiefer exhibition in France within the last 30 years.
In his studioImage: Renate Graf
The nearly 150 works on display include key early ones dealing with the Holocaust such as "Resurrexit" and "Quaternität" (both from 1973), "Varus" (1976), "Margarethe" (1981) and "Sulamith" (1983). More recent works exhibited revolve around Jewish mysticism and the kabbalah. Beginning on December 16, the exhibition runs until April 18, 2016.
