Artist Spotlight
Anselm Kiefer’s monumental body of work represents a microcosm of collective memory, visually encapsulating a broad range of cultural, literary, and philosophical allusions. Drawing from sources that range from the Old and New Testaments, Kabbalah mysticism, Norse mythology, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, Kiefer makes palpable the complexities of human history.
Launched in 2020, Artist Spotlight is presented once a month as a regular part of the gallery’s programming. Each Artist Spotlight highlights a work by an individual artist—made available exclusively online for forty-eight hours—together with new editorial features and selected archival content.
Artist Spotlight: Anselm Kiefer features a bronze sculpture by the artist. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
#GagosianSpotlight
Photo: Georges Poncet
In Conversation
Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein
Gagosian and Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center hosted a conversation between poets Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein inside Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Rothenberg and Bernstein explored some of the themes that occupy Kiefer—Jewish mysticism, the poetry of Paul Celan, and the formulation of a global poetics in response to the Holocaust—in a discussion and readings of their poetry.
In Conversation
Anselm Kiefer and Michael Govan
On the occasion of his exhibition Anselm Kiefer: Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles, the artist spoke with Michael Govan about his works that elaborate on themes of loss, history, and redemption.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022
The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Anselm Kiefer
In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents make a selection from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the fourth installment, we are honored to present the artist Anselm Kiefer.
Anselm Kiefer: Architect of Landscape and Cosmology
Jérôme Sans visits La Ribaute in Barjac, France, the vast studio-estate transformed by Anselm Kiefer over the course of decades. The labyrinthine site, now open to the public, stands as a total work of art, reflecting through its grounds, pavilions, and passageways major themes in Kiefer’s oeuvre: regeneration, mythology, memory, and more.
La Ribaute: Transitive, It Transforms
Camille Morineau writes of the triumph of the feminine at Anselm Kiefer’s former studio-estate in Barjac, France, describing the site and its installations as a demonstration of women’s power, a meditation on inversion and permeability, and a reversal of the long invisibility of women in history and myth.
Related Exhibitions
Related News
Design
Anselm Kiefer
Vienna State Opera Safety Curtain
November 8, 2023–June 2024
Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna
www.mip.at
Anselm Kiefer has been selected to design the twenty-sixth Eiserner Vorhang (Safety Curtain), an annual project by Vienna’s museum in progress, a nonprofit art initiative that transforms the fire protection wall between the stage and the auditorium of the Vienna State Opera into a temporary exhibition space for contemporary art. Kiefer’s work is on view for the audience before and after performances and during intermissions.
Anselm Kiefer’s safety curtain, Solaris (2023), for the 2023–24 season of the Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna. Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Andreas Scheiblecker, courtesy museum in progress
Exhibition
Anselm Kiefer in
Les Fleurs du Mal
October 18–November 13, 2023
Maison Guerlain, Paris
stores.guerlain.com
Les Fleurs du Mal, inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s poetry collection of the same name, is the sixteenth annual show at Maison Guerlain. The exhibition, whose title translates to The Flowers of Evil, addresses the kaleidoscopic world of flowers in paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, and photographs by twenty-six contemporary artists. Work by Anselm Kiefer is included.
Anselm Kiefer, Extases féminines—Margherite Porete (Feminine Ecstasies––Margherite Porete), 2012 © Anselm Kiefer
In Conversation
Anselm Kiefer
Barry Bergdoll
Tuesday, May 30, 2023, 5–7pm
Columbia Global Center, Paris
globalcenters.columbia.edu
Anselm Kiefer will be in conversation with architectural historian and Columbia professor Barry Bergdoll exploring the role of architecture and space in the artist’s work. The exchange will address, among other works, Kiefer’s permanent installations in the Panthéon in Paris, a building about which Bergdoll has written extensively, including in the exhibition catalogue Le Panthéon: Symbole des révolutions (1989).
Anselm Kiefer’s permanent installation in the Panthéon, Paris. Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Anselm Kiefer
Angeli caduti
Through July 21, 2024
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
www.palazzostrozzi.org
This exhibition, whose title translates to Fallen Angels, places work by Anselm Kiefer in direct dialogue with the Renaissance architecture of Palazzo Strozzi, and reflects on topics such as identity, history, and philosophy. Featuring over twenty-five works by Kiefer, both historical and recent, it also includes a new work for the museum’s courtyard and an immersive installation comprised of sixty canvases of various formats.
Installation view, Anselm Kiefer: Angeli caduti, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, March 22–July 21, 2024. Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio
Closed
Dix und die Gegenwart
September 30, 2023–April 1, 2024
Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany
www.deichtorhallen.de
This exhibition, whose title translates to Dix and the Present, explores the work of Otto Dix (1891–1969) and the artist’s enduring influence. It focuses on the ostensibly apolitical work Dix created beginning in 1933, which was less aggressive than his radical and provocative paintings of the 1920s. His Nazi-era landscapes, commissioned portraits, and Christian allegories were instead subtle and subversive forms of contemporary social critique. The exhibition aims to reveal the shifting cultural and social parameters in the reception of Dix’s art, while also demonstrating how his oeuvre continues to fascinate more than forty contemporary artists. Work by Georg Baselitz, Glenn Brown, John Currin, Nan Goldin, and Anselm Kiefer is included.
Glenn Brown, The Holy Bible, 2022 © Glenn Brown
Closed
Anselm Kiefer
La photographie au commencement
October 6, 2023–March 3, 2024
Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France
www.musee-lam.fr
This retrospective, whose title translates to Photography at the Beginning, is the first to focus on Anselm Kiefer’s relationship with photography, and features over a hundred works from throughout his career. This underrecognized aspect of his practice has been central to the artist’s work from the late 1960s through the present. The exhibition examines themes and inspirations that have informed Kiefer’s approach over the last fifty years and includes paintings, books, and sculptures that complement the photographic works on display, and demonstrate their integral role within the artist’s oeuvre.
Installation view, Anselm Kiefer: La photographie au commencement, Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France, October 6, 2023–March 3, 2024. Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Nicholas Dewitte
Closed
Anselm Kiefer
Bilderstreit
October 14, 2023–February 25, 2024
Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands
www.voorlinden.nl
This exhibition features paintings, sculptures, artist’s books, and installations by Anselm Kiefer, many of which have never been shown before. A close collaboration between the artist and Museum Voorlinden, it highlights the breadth of Kiefer’s interests, including history, mythology, and literature.
Installation view, Anselm Kiefer: Bilderstreit, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands, October 14, 2023–February 25, 2024. Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Antoine von Kaam