Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor born in 1945, a leading figure of Neo-Expressionism. His monumental work confronts German history, the memory of Nazism, and the traumas of the Second World War.
Anselm Kiefer(1945 — ?)
Anselm Kiefer
Autriche, France, Allemagne
7 min read
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born on March 8, 1945, in Donaueschingen, during the final months of the Third Reich
- Provocative 'Besetzungen' series (Occupations, 1969), in which he photographs himself performing the Nazi salute to denounce collective amnesia
- Uses raw materials (lead, straw, ash, earth) in monumental canvases
- Sets up his studio-artwork at Barjac, then Croissy in France, from the 1990s onward
- First retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2007 and admission to the Collège de France
Works & Achievements
Photographic series in which Kiefer mimes the Nazi salute in front of European landscapes, to denounce the repression of Germany's past.
Large canvas combining monumental Nazi-inspired architecture with a tribute to the artist, questioning memory and guilt.
Painting covered in straw evoking the German woman from Celan's poem, a symbol of a Germany haunted by its history.
Dark canvas covered in ashes, a tribute to the Jewish figure in Celan's “Death Fugue” and to the memory of the Shoah.
Self-portrait lying beneath a field of giant sunflowers connecting the earth to the starry sky, a meditation on life and death.
Monumental work blending Egyptian myth, technology and alchemy, on the theme of death and rebirth.
Monumental installation of concrete towers and display cases beneath the glass roof of the Grand Palais in Paris.
Six large display cases and a mural work installed in the Panthéon in Paris as a tribute to the writer Maurice Genevoix.
Anecdotes
Anselm Kiefer was born on March 8, 1945, in Donaueschingen, just a few weeks before the surrender of Nazi Germany. His entire childhood unfolded in a country in ruins, and he recounts having played in the rubble left by the bombings: this debris would later become the very material of his art.
As a young artist, in 1969 Kiefer created a provocative series of photographs, the *Occupations* (Besetzungen), in which he had himself photographed giving the Nazi salute in front of European landscapes and monuments. The scandal was immense, but his aim was the opposite of what people assumed: to force Germany to face a past that many wanted to forget.
Kiefer almost never uses paint alone. His monumental canvases are covered with straw, ashes, sand, molten lead, dried flowers, and even earth. Some works weigh hundreds of kilos and continue to transform, flaking or rusting over time.
Two of his most famous paintings, *Margarethe* and *Sulamith*, are inspired by the poem *Death Fugue* by the Jewish poet Paul Celan, a survivor of the Holocaust. For the golden hair of Margarethe, the German woman, Kiefer glued real straw; for the ashen hair of Sulamith, the Jewish woman, he used soot and black ashes.
In 2007, Anselm Kiefer became the first living artist invited to install a permanent work in the Louvre since Georges Braque, more than fifty years earlier. There he painted an immense canvas for a staircase in the antiquities wing.
Primary Sources
I don't remember the war, but it shaped me. I was born in the ruins, and those ruins are the beginning of everything.
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening... your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith.
Art is what survives. Its purpose is not to embellish the world, but to understand it, and sometimes to endure it.
For me, lead is the material of alchemy. It is a heavy, saturnine metal, yet it carries within it the promise of gold.
Key Places
Town in the Black Forest where Kiefer was born in March 1945, in a Germany lying in ruins at the end of the war.
Institution where Kiefer studied painting in the late 1960s after giving up law.
Place where he crossed paths with Joseph Beuys around 1970, a decisive encounter for his vision of art as an act of memory.
Former industrial site transformed from 1992 into a vast studio-landscape with towers, tunnels and pavilions. The heart of his creative work for two decades.
Vast studio near Paris where Kiefer settled from the 2000s onward to create his monumental works.
In 2007, Kiefer became the first living artist since Braque to install a permanent work there, in the antiquities wing.
Typical Objects
A heavy metal that Kiefer melts and applies to his canvases and sculptures. He associates it with alchemy, melancholy and the transformation of matter.
Strands of straw glued onto the paintings, notably to depict Margarethe's golden hair. Straw evokes the German fields, but also their potential burning.
Soot and ashes spread across the canvases, particularly for the figure of Sulamith. They refer directly to the memory of the Shoah and of burned bodies.
Large books with lead pages that Kiefer sculpts and stacks. Unreadable and heavy, they symbolize knowledge, memory and the weight of history.
Blackened sunflower stems and flowers, incorporated into the paintings and installations. Inspired by Van Gogh and the alchemist Robert Fludd, they connect the starry sky and death.
A recurring motif of the artist's palette, sometimes fitted with wings, that runs through his canvases of the 1970s-1980s. It asserts the role of art in the face of history.
School Curriculum
Vocabulary & Tags
Key Vocabulary
Daily Life
Morning
Kiefer often starts early and walks through his vast studio, formerly the Barjac estate, now Croissy. He rides a bicycle between the warehouses, checking the condition of the canvases left outside to dry, rust, or crack.
Afternoon
The afternoon is devoted to the physical work of materials: he melts lead, throws sand, burns surfaces with a blowtorch, and glues on straw and ashes. Several assistants help him handle works that sometimes weigh hundreds of kilos.
Evening
In the evening, Kiefer reads a great deal: the poetry of Celan, the Kabbalah, mythology, and alchemical treatises, which all feed into his work. He takes notes, draws, and prepares the motifs for upcoming paintings.
Food
Kiefer leads a spare studio life organized around his work. Settled first in the south of France and then in the Paris region, he makes do with simple cooking, the meal being above all a time to talk with his collaborators.
Clothing
He is most often seen in practical studio gear: sturdy trousers and a jacket stained with paint, lead, and dust. The clothing, purely functional, bears the marks of constant contact with his materials.
Housing
Kiefer lives where he creates. In Barjac he lived at La Ribaute, a former industrial site transformed into an art landscape with towers, tunnels, and greenhouses; near Paris he occupies a gigantic studio-hangar that combines living space and production space.
Historical Timeline
Period Vocabulary
Liens externes & ressources
Références
Œuvres
Occupations (Besetzungen)
1969
Au peintre inconnu (Dem unbekannten Maler)
1983
Sulamith
1983
Les Ordres de la nuit (Die Ordnung der Nacht)
1996
Osiris et Isis
1985-1987
Étoiles tombantes / Sternenfall (Monumenta, Grand Palais)
2007
