2010/03/08

Anselm Kiefer (German, b. March 8, 1945)


Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven, 1970
Watercolor, gouache, and graphite pencil on joined paper
15 3/4 x 18 7/8 in. (40 X 47.9 cm) 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Each man has his own dome, his own perceptions, his own theories. There is no one god for all."


Parsifal I, 1973
Oil on paper laid on canvas
support: 3247 x 2198 mm
on paper, unique




Resurrexit, 1973
Oil, acrylic, and charcoal on burlap. 290 x 180 cm. 
Collection Sanders. Amsterdam.




Paths: March Sand, 1980
Oil, emulsion, shellac, sand and photograph (on projection paper) on canvas
284.5 x 440.7 cm
Saatchi Collection, London



 The Book, (1979-1985) 
Oil, lead, photographic paper, straw, and fabric on canvas




Landscape with Wing, 1981
Oil, straw, lead on canvas, 130 by 218 inches
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.




Margarete, 1981
Oil and straw on canvas. 280 x 380 cm.
Saatchi Collection, London



 To the Unknown Painter, 1983
Oil, emulsion, woodcut, shellac, latex, and straw on canvas 9'2" square
The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh




Twilight of the West  [Abendland] 1989
lead sheet, synthetic polymer paint, ash, plaster, cement, earth, varnish on canvas and wood
400.0 (h) x 380.0 (w) x 12.0 (d) cm
painted in image c.l. "Abend-Land"




Leviathan, 1989
330 x 560 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie




Book with Wings, 1992-94
Lead, steel, and tin, 74 3/4 x 208 5/8 x 43 3/8 inches
Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 
Museum purchase, Sid W. Richardson Foundation Endowment Fund



Les Reines de France, 1995. 
Emulsion, acrylic, sunflower seeds, photographs, woodcut, gold leaf, and cardboard (mosaic) on canvas, 
Three panels,Overall: 220 1/2 x 290 1/2 inches; Each: 220 1/2 x 98 1/2 inches. 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum


 Falling Stars, 1995



 Your Age and Mine and the Age of the World, 1997





Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom, 2000





Palmsonntag, 2007
36 panels of mixed media on board (in lead frame under glass), 
fiberglass and resin palm tree, clay bricks and steel support
Dimensions variable




hortus conclusus, 2009
Gouache on photopaper
69 3/8 x 55 13/16 inches (176 x 142 cm)






Over the past four decades, Anselm Kiefer has produced a diverse body of work in painting, sculpture and installation that has made him among the most important artists of his generation.

Kiefer studied with Joseph Beuys in the early 1970s, but soon began to develop his own, deliberately indigenous set of subjects and symbols that he used to explore the fraught territory of German history and identity. In his muscular artistic language, physical materiality and visual complexity enliven his themes and content with a rich, vibrant tactility. His subject-matter ranges over sources as diverse as Teutonic mythology and history, alchemy and the nature of belief, all depicted in a bewildering variety of materials, including oil paint, dirt, lead, models, photographs, woodcuts, sand, straw and all manner of organic material.
 
Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany in 1945. He lives and works in Provence, France. 


Photo: Anselm Kiefer (© Renate Graf)