Anselm Kiefer

This book accompanies a major exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum on the early work of internationally acclaimed German artist Anselm Kiefer. It focuses on his paintings, drawings, photographs and artist books created between 1969 and 1982, in the private collections of the Hall Art Foundation. Anselm Kiefer: Early Works is the first institutional show and publication in the UK dedicated to Kiefer’s early practice. The book introduces themes, subjects and styles that have become signature to Kiefer’s work, while providing a more intimate and complementary context for his large-scale installations that he is best known for today. The early works are accompanied by three recent paintings from the artist’s own collections and White Cube, chosen by the artist himself. Art historians, artists, curators and experts of Kiefer’s art from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Britain and the US have contributed 46 original texts on individual works, organised in a chronological structure. An illustrated chronology at the end of the book compiled by Stephanie Biron from the Hall Art Foundation provides an overview of the artist’s early practice and life, to contextualise the works. The book begins with Kiefer’s iconic Occupations and Heroische Sinnbilder series, created in 1969 and 1970, which Kiefer views as his first serious works. Kiefer was among the first generation of German post-war artists to directly confront the country’s troubled past and identity. Full of complex references to German socio-political history but also to culture, literature and his personal life, Kiefer’s early works carry a unique iconography, linking classic ideas of great art with a distinctive understanding of concrete artistic materiality. The landscapes in his watercolours are historically charged; hand-written words on paintings are closely linked with poetry well known to most German viewers; motifs and symbols point at Nazi ideologies and a collective feeling of guilt.

Kiefer's dramatic, metallic paintings and sculptures staged within the walls of a cinquecento palace The historic Palazzo Strozzi in Florence welcomes one of the greatest masters of art of the late 20th and early 21st century: Anselm Kiefer. Famous for his striking works that investigate the themes of memory, myth, war and existence, Kiefer presents an itinerary through his historical works and new productions, in an original dialogue with the Palazzo's architecture and Italian history. Each of Kiefer's paintings and sculptures expresses a monumentality and powerful materiality, part of the infinite wealth of resources with which he probes the depths of memory and the past. From the beginning of his career, he has embarked on an artistic journey in which history, religion, mysticism, poetry and philosophy combine and mingle. His late 1960s works were among the first to reflect on the history of World War II and Germany's emotional and cultural legacy. Yet in this consequential space, Kiefer's drastic compositions layered in gold and silver take on a new significance in the context of the theatrical and deeply religious paintings of the Italian Renaissance. This exhibition, and its dazzling monograph, restores the vital complexity of Kiefer's art: celebrating its interweaving of figural art and abstraction, nature and artificiality, creation and destruction, in a strong engagement for the public in the physical and conceptual space of his works. German artist Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) developed his signature style of multimedia impasto painting through the influence of Neo-Expressionism and artists such as Joseph Beuys and Georg Baselitz. His art incorporates global religious traditions and occult teachings, while also reckoning with the legacy of the Third Reich.

Kiefer's dramatic, metallic paintings and sculptures staged within the walls of a cinquecento palace The historic Palazzo Strozzi in Florence welcomes one of the greatest masters of art of the late 20th and early 21st century: Anselm Kiefer. Famous for his striking works that investigate the themes of memory, myth, war and existence, Kiefer presents an itinerary through his historical works and new productions, in an original dialogue with the Palazzo's architecture and Italian history. Each of Kiefer's paintings and sculptures expresses a monumentality and powerful materiality, part of the infinite wealth of resources with which he probes the depths of memory and the past. From the beginning of his career, he has embarked on an artistic journey in which history, religion, mysticism, poetry and philosophy combine and mingle. His late 1960s works were among the first to reflect on the history of World War II and Germany's emotional and cultural legacy. Yet in this consequential space, Kiefer's drastic compositions layered in gold and silver take on a new significance in the context of the theatrical and deeply religious paintings of the Italian Renaissance. This exhibition, and its dazzling monograph, restores the vital complexity of Kiefer's art: celebrating its interweaving of figural art and abstraction, nature and artificiality, creation and destruction, in a strong engagement for the public in the physical and conceptual space of his works. German artist Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) developed his signature style of multimedia impasto painting through the influence of Neo-Expressionism and artists such as Joseph Beuys and Georg Baselitz. His art incorporates global religious traditions and occult teachings, while also reckoning with the legacy of the Third Reich.