Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer , 1945-, German painter, one of the major figures of neoexpressionism , b. Donaueschingen. He studied (1970) with Joseph Beuys , who heavily influenced his work. His large paintings of the 1970s and early 1980s, with their strongly symbolic themes of a savage and contemptible Nazi past (e.g., Shulamite, 1983) and a sere German landscape (e.g., The Meistersinger, 1982), are characterized by broad drawing, scorched and bloody colors, use of unusual materials (straw, metal, pottery shards, glass, sand, etc.), and often the addition of photographs and three-dimensional elements. Later paintings treat mythological, classical, and biblical subject matter as well as Jewish mysticism. Kiefer is also known for his large environmental installations, often with historical themes; for three-dimensional works, often made of lead; and for photographs. Since 1993 he has lived in France. In 2007 he inaugurated Monumenta, an annual large one-artist show held at the Grand Palais in Paris; his recent recent paintings and monumental multimedia constructions were featured.

Kiefer, Anselm (1945– ). German painter, born in Donaueschingen. He originally studied law and his intermittent training as a painter included periods of study with Horst Antes (1968) and Joseph Beuys (1970–2). Early in his career he was a Conceptual artist (his work included a series of photographs of himself giving the Nazi salute), but he turned to painting and has come to be regarded as a leading exponent of Neo-Expressionism. His characteristic works are large, heavily worked canvases, often incorporating material such as straw (he has also sometimes mixed blood with his paint). His subjects frequently refer to German history or Nordic mythology and show an attempt to come to terms with his country's recent past. In his revision of H. H. Arnason's A History of Modern Art (1986) Daniel Wheeeler writes: ‘In the great black, apocalyptic paintings of Anselm Kiefer, a poet in paint born in the ashes of the Third Reich, the bardic spirit of the new German art has soared, phoenixlike, to heights of splendor that are as redemptive for painting itself as for the culture the artist both mourns and glorifies.’ Many other critics have shared this high opinion of Kiefer (in 1987 Robert Hughes described him as ‘the best painter of his generation on either side of the Atlantic … one of the very few visual artists in the last decade to have shown an unmistakable grandeur of symbolic vision'), but Peter Fuller referred to the ‘nihilistic voids’ of his works, which ‘consist of nothing but inert matter'.