Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is a German artist who has explored his country’s postwar identity, history, and mythology throughout his career. A painter, sculptor, and installation artist, materiality figures heavily into Kiefer’s practice. His large-scale paintings achieve their characteristic texture through his liberal application of pigments combined with found organic matter, metal, and lead, resulting in stark, haunting images with an imposing physicality. “Ruins, for me, are the beginning,” he mused. “With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.”

 

Courtesy of artnet.com