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
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.
Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies
Bobbie Sheng explores the symbiotic relationship between the poet and visual artists of his time and tracks the enduring influence of his poetry on artists working today.
Related Exhibitions
Related News
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
Tour
Anselm Kiefer
Exodus
Saturday, April 15, 2023, 2pm
Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles
Curator, art historian, and theologian Daniel A. Siedell will lead a tour of Anselm Kiefer: Exodus, an exhibition of new work by the artist at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles. A specialist in the connections between theology, aesthetics, and art making, Siedell will guide guests through the large-scale paintings and sculpture on view and address Kiefer’s philosophical, literary, and spiritual influences.
Installation view, Anselm Kiefer: Exodus, Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, November 19, 2022–June 16, 2023. Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Jeff McLane
Visit
Anselm Kiefer: Exodus
Pop-Up Shop and Reading Room
Through June 16, 2023
Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles
In conjunction with the exhibition Anselm Kiefer: Exodus, Gagosian is pleased to present a pop-up shop and reading room at Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles. Centered on the artist’s work, the shop features catalogues, monographs, and posters published for Kiefer’s exhibitions as well as rare books, alongside a broader selection of titles recently released by the gallery. The reading room provides an opportunity for visitors to peruse publications on Kiefer and texts that are relevant to his practice, including poetry by Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann; the Prose Edda, a body of thirteenth-century Icelandic literature that remains a major source of German mythology; and The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet. The pop-up shop and reading room are open during exhibition hours.
“Anselm Kiefer: Exodus” Pop-Up Shop and Reading Room, Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, 2022. Photo: Jeff McLane
Museum Exhibitions
Opening Today
Dix und die Gegenwart
September 30, 2023–February 25, 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
Opening this Week
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.
Anselm Kiefer, Für Martin Heidegger Todtnauberg (For Martin Heidegger Todtnauberg), 2010–14 © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Charles Duprat
Closed
Anselm Kiefer
June 9–September 3, 2023
Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France
chateau-la-coste.com
Five outdoor sculptures from Anselm Kiefer’s Frauen der Antike (Women of Antiquity) (1999–2002) and Femmes martyres (2018–19) series are on view at the Renzo Piano–designed art pavilion at Château La Coste. The bronze dresses, each bearing an attribute of a female historical or mythological figure, are situated among the pavilion’s art and architecture. Kiefer’s depiction of the Greek lyrical poetess Sappho, for example—his “monument to all the unknown women poets”—shoulders a tower of lead books.
Anselm Kiefer, Sappho, 2002–18 © Anselm Kiefer
Closed
Jubiläumsausstellung—Special Guest Duane Hanson
October 30, 2022–January 8, 2023
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel
www.fondationbeyeler.ch
This exhibition, whose title translates to Anniversary Exhibition—Special Guest Duane Hanson, features more than one hundred works from the foundation’s collection, from modern to contemporary art, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the institution. Several hyperrealist sculptures by Duane Hanson enrich the presentation, opening up surprising perspectives on the exhibited artworks, architecture, staff, and visitors. Work by Francis Bacon, Georg Baselitz, Alberto Giacometti, Anselm Kiefer, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Whiteread is included.
Installation view, Jubiläumsausstellung—Special Guest Duane Hanson, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland, October 30, 2022–January 8, 2023. Artwork, front to back: © 2022 Estate of Duane Hanson/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein