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Anselm Kiefer: an artist between heaven and earth

By André Araújo Lima 13/08/2023

One of the most prominent contemporary painters is the German artist Anselm Kiefer (1945-). His work, based on the thoughts of German artist Joseph Beuys (1932-1986), is a passage through the myths and ideals of the German people. At first, Kiefer works with themes related to the events of Nazi Germany, characters and symbols from that time are recurrent in this phase. He uses different types of materials such as sand, melted lead on canvas, earth, coal, plants, hair, fabrics, stones, photographs glued onto canvas and then painted over layers of sand, generally with works of monumental dimensions.

Currently, the artist seeks his theme in the symbolic dialogue between “Heaven and Earth”, a theme that, in fact, has always been present in his work, but never so poignant.

Throughout the 1980s, Kiefer produced a large number of works on the conflicts and history of his country, and on issues of the human spirit. He addressed issues of German identity that remained expressed in painting in a secondary way. His work emphasizes the use of materials, but also his approach to memory, in his case exploring the complex realm of historical identity and collective culture of himself and Germany.

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Seus estudos e pinturas mostram de maneira persuasiva uma comunicação com a memória e a inquietação espiritual da psique do povo alemão. Seu trabalho ainda retém muito da ambiguidade consciente sobre o passado e a relação pessoal do artista com ele. Essa relação com o passado representado na pintura demonstra uma espécie de ação no presente, através de uma consciência coletiva em que o artista afirma buscar uma aproximação:

artistic work consists of perceiving, in the most exact way possible, that which moves me as an example for everyone... I know it seems absurd to say that perhaps man can capture anything, intuit a force that does not refer to him, but perhaps it is this capacity that distinguishes the artist from other men. (KIEFER, 2007, p.25).

Anselm Kiefer, “Tell me where the flowers are”, 2012/22. Acrylic, oil, emulsion, shellac on photograph on canvas, 190 x 380 cm.

In this way, by exorcising the past, Kiefer is reliving it to the core with ties of disenchantment: a solitary pilgrimage, which the artist needs to obtain a satisfactory result. In a kind of return to the sublime, mixing hope, irony and skepticism, Kiefer incorporates a new humanism and reports that:

It may seem like a form of resignation, but it is not resignation of no longer being able to continue, but resignation in the face of infinity. And resignation, for me, does not mean renunciation. I try to see where I am in infinity and I try to represent the things that are around me. (IBIDEM, 2007, p.38).

In this sense, painting reaches a stage of sacredness, its process, a form of religion against an imposition of a homogeneous life, sold as beauty products, civility for madmen and medical diagnoses for believers of sacrosanct science. As Picasso would say, “painting is a weapon of war”.