Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer , born the March 8th 1945 with Donaueschingen, is an artist contemporary plastics technician German, which lives and works in France since 1993.

Biography

Anselm Kiefer is born under the bombardments and grows in the middle of the ruins. He studied the right, the literature and linguistics, before directing himself towards art while attending into 1966 the academies of Freiburg-in-Brisgau, Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf. In 1969 it is made famous in the artistic medium while being caught in photograph, making safety Nazi in big cities of Europe. Its will is to awake the consciences by affirming that the Nazism did not die but that the subject remains occulted: “Studying in right I had brilliant and fascistic professors. At the school the subject was evoked during two weeks. At the house one did not evoke it”. He also studied of 1970 to 1972 with Joseph Beuys with the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf, and becomes one of the most important German artists of the post-war period.

Since 1993 Anselm Kiefer lives and works in France with Barjac (Gard), where it transformed a industrial Friche into a workshop of 35 hectares, called Ribaute .

Its work

Its fabrics and more generally its works, saturated with matter (sand, ground, layers of lead that Kiefer calls " livres" , soot, saliva, chalk, hair, ash, materials of ruin and of reject), evoke the catastrophe and the destruction of the Second world war, in particular the Shoah. The choice of the matters also expresses its sensitivity to the color: “More you remain in front of my tables, plus you discover the colors. With the first glance, one with the impression that my tables are gray but by paying attention more, one notices that I work with the matter which brings the color”. The spirit which is in the matter also has its importance. Soot for example is the resultant of a different initial matter which underwent, thanks to fire, of many transformations. Soot is thus the final and final stage of another matter.

Works

1973: Parsifal , series of works on paper.
1988: Melancholia , ashes on photograph on lead within a framework glazed out of steel, 170*230 cm.
1989: Angel off History , sculpture out of lead and another materials.
1995: Queens of France , series of tables large size.
1999: Frauen der Antike , series of sculptures of wedding gowns.

Principal individual exposures

1978 : Bilder und Bücher with the museum of the Art schools of Bern.
1980: Invited artist of the house of the 39e, West Germany Biennale de Venise.
1984: Anselm Kiefer with the Museum of modern art of the town of Paris and with the Center of contemporary visual arts of Bordeaux.
1987: Anselm Kiefer with the museums of modern art and contemporary of Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and with the MoMA of New York.
1991: Retrospective Kiefer with the Neue Nationalgalerie of Berlin.
1993: Melancholia , road show to Japan in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima.
1996: This obscure clearness which falls from the stars to the gallery Yvon Lambert to Paris
1998: Works on paper with the MoMA of New York.
1999: Die Frauen Der Antike with the gallery Yvon Lambert in Paris.
2000: Chevirat ha-Kelim , with the Vault of Salpêtrière in Paris.
2006: Anselm Kiefer sky-ground with the Museum of contemporary art of Montreal.
2007: Anselm Kiefer with the Guggenheim museum of Bilbao.
2007: Fall of stars ( Sternenfall ), for the opening of the cycles Monumenta with the Large palace in Paris.

Quotations

“ the History for me is a material like the landscape or the color. ”
“ to know oneself, it is necessary to know its people, his history… I thus plunged in the History, awoke the memory, not to change the policy, but to change me, and drew from the myths to express my emotion. It was a too heavy reality to be real, it was necessary to pass by the myth to restore it. ”
“ My biography is the biography of Germany. ”
“ the morning before starting to work, I go in my library. It makes sixty meters length, that enables me to saunter as to the Vatican. Often, I find a book for which I require, whatever is the subject, whether it is of mode or literature. They is very curious, as one very often finds what one seeks. I think that we have an access to our books which does not pass by the intellect, which forwards elsewhere than by the brain. ”
“ Without memory, it cannot have identity there, the more so as I consider that the identity goes up much further in time than our own birth ”
“ a painting is always a defeat ” (interviewed by Frederic Taddéi, on Europe 1, on June 11th, 2007)
“ When I finish a table or a sculpture I build a house around, because work must have its own skin ”
“ I see my tables as works which deserve to be transformed ”

Anecdotes

the lead sheets that Anselm Kiefer uses in its works (in particular for the series Fraüen der Antike and that of the Livres ) come from the roof of the Cathédrale of Cologne during its restoration.

Bibliographical references

Anselm Kiefer and the poetry of Paul Celan , by Andrea Lauterwein, published in the Editions of the Glance (2005), ISBN 2841051595.
20 years of loneliness , by Anselm Kiefer, published in the Editions of the Glance (1998), ISBN 2841051005.
Anselm Kiefer , by Daniel Arasse, published with the Éditions of the Glance (2001), ISBN 2841051269.

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