"To be born in Germany in March 1945, in the midst of massive bombing of the Allied forces, is paradoxically an act of great responsibility. Anselm Kiefer's early works, which reactivated a collective German memory in the late 1960s, affirmed that no one, no place and no landscape can be innocent.”
- Lasvignes Serge
Anselm Kiefer (1945) is a German painter and sculptor whose work explores themes of German history and particularly the 3rd Reich (with a particular focus on the Shoah). In Kiefer’s shatteringly poetic body of work the writings of Paul Celan and various spiritualities (Kabbalah, shamanism, alchemy) also play a prominent role.
His works, often exceptionally large and very materic substantial, penetrate the space of the viewer, encroaching on their comfort zone and thus stubbornly forcing them to be confronted with the subject.