Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kieferis a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth8 March 1945
CountryGermany
thinking purpose upbringing
Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.
might facts chaos
I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.
artist interesting
Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.
ideas paradise judgment
I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.
heaven earth rooms
I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.
memories believe palaces
But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.
art work-out sometimes
Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.
book ideas stories
The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.
house eras germany
When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.
bears doe forests
I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history.
ideas ruins debris
Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.
children house ruins
As a child I had no toys; our house was bombed, but there were lots of bricks. Ruins are wonderful because they are the beginning of something new, you can do something with them.
thinking artist different
History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.
spiritual age firsts
I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all.