Anselm Kiefer (°1945, Donaueschingen) is generally considered one of the most important artists of recent decades.
The exhibition in the SMAK shows recent monumental paintings, sculptures and books made between 1996 and 1999.
His exhibition in the German Pavilion at the 1980 Venice Biennale caused an uproar in his native country. In the post-conceptual era, Kiefer depicted the dark recent history of Germany on gigantic canvases. Stories from German mythology were linked to Wagnerian themes and images from Nazi Germany. The works by this ex-student of Joseph Beuys were by no means a glorification of that period, but a relentless and critical penetration into the historical consciousness. But above all his work has a stunning visual and plastic impact. They do not leave the spectator indifferent, either in their form or content. His paintings and sculptures are imbued with a bitter irony and open sarcasm. When Kiefer incorporates history and mythology into his works they are almost always updated and transformed. In the shape of landscapes, forests, buildings, starry skies, aeroplanes and books, they are no longer innocent stories from a distant or imaginary past - they have become reality and therefore also an issue.
The exhibition in the SMAK shows recent monumental paintings, sculptures and books made between 1996 and 1999, when Kiefer was living in Barjac in Southern France. Van Gogh’s starry skies and sunflowers inspired him to do a new series on the themes of ‘falling stars’ and ‘sunships’. From these apparently trivial motifs Kiefer created a dazzling accumulation of meanings in which he transcends the memories both of his own individual history and of the great cosmic events, in matchless paintings and astonishing sculptures and books made of lead.
