Anselm Kiefer, Donaueschingen / Alemanha - arte conceptual contemporânea

Berenice, 2007, mixed media on canvas

«Faith, Hope, Love series» The Women of Antiquity:

Hypatia, Candidia, Myrtis, 2002, sculpture

«Faith, Hope, Love series» Elisabeth von Österreich, 1991,

mixed media and lead mounted on wood
(em exposição no Museu Berardo Lisboa)

«Faith, Hope, Love series» The Women of Antiquity:

Hipatia, Candidia, Myrtis, 2002, sculpture

«Faith, Hope, Love series» Elisabeth von Österreich, 1991

mixed media on photograph

«Faith, Hope, Love series» Propeller 1984-86,

mixed media on photodocument on paper on linen with lead

Wild Emperor, 1975, watercolor and acrylic on paper

Les Reines de France, 1995, mixed media on canvas

«Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom series» Mao Zedong, 2000
mixed media on photographs

«Heaven and Earth series» Melancholia, 2004
mixed media on canvas

Ladder to the Sky, 1991, mixed media on canvas

Twilight of the West, 1989, mixed media on canvas and wood

«Heaven and Earth series» Winter Landscape, 1970

watercolor, gouache and graphite pencil on paper

Brünnhilde Sleeps, 1980, acrylic and gouache on photograph

«Weg series» Way I, 1977, oil and acrylic on paper on linen

Osiris and Isis, 1985-87, mixed media

Kain und Abel, 2006, mixed media

My Father Pledged me a Sword, 1975,

watercolor, gouache and ballpoint pen on paper

Parsifal I, 1973, oil on paper laid on canvas

Parsifal II, 1973, oil and blood on paper laid on canvas

Parsifal III, 1973, oil and blood on paper laid on canvas

Öbisfelde, Germany, The Iron Curtain, 1987, mixed media on photograph

Lilith, 1987-89, oil, lash and copper wire on canvas

«Stone Halls series» Athanor, 1991, mixed media on canvas

«Stone Halls series» Sulamith, 1983, mixed media on canvas

Heavy Cloud, 1985, lead and shellac on photograph,

mounted on cardboard

Broken Flowers and Grass, 1979,

watercolor, gouache, acrylic and graphite pencil on paper

* Varus, 1976, oil and acrylic on paper

«Weg series» Paths: March Sand, 1980, mixed media on photograph

Nuremberg, 1982, acrylic, emulsion and straw on canvas

Nigredo, 1984, layers of straw

schellac and paint over a photograph

Pintor alemão que efectuou os seus estudos de Direito na Albert-Ludwigs-Universität em Freiburg (1965-66), na Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste em Karlsruhe (1969) e na Staatliche Kunstakademie em Düsseldorf. A partir desta época, história e mito passaram a ser os temas centrais do seu trabalho. Em 1971 pintou as suas primeiras paisagens de grande escala e a partir de 1973 interiores em madeira que produziam um efeito monumental. O entusiasmo que a sua obra gerou, sobretudo nos Estados Unidos, foi simultaneamente acompanhado por uma crítica feroz. Em 1977 e 1987 participou nas documenta 6 e 8, em Kassel. Em 1981-83 executou pinturas sobre fotografias e livros. Em 1987 teve uma importante retrospectiva no Art Institute de Chicago e em 1991 na Galeria Nacional em Berlim. Nos anos 90 realizou numerosos livros-objecto, esculturas e instalações. Kiefer é o precursor da chamada Nova Pintura Alemã.
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The Berardo Collection, Museu Berardo Lisboa

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Born under the bombshells in Germany in 1945, raised during after-war reconstruction and Nuremberg trial, Kiefer keeps exploring the great forces of traumatic European history, mainly the Second World War. By doing this, he explores all the wars, real and mythological. He confronts us to the fundamental experiences of human existence: the human being opposed to Nature, to Cosmos, to History, to Philosophy and Religions. Also confronted to space and time and to his infinite possibilities as well as his undeniable power of destruction. The human being and the Tower of Babel's syndrome are evoked through three towers built under the glass cathedral, among which are some pure ruins.

The emotional power of Kiefer's universe is very strong due to a successful fusion of imagery, medium and monumentality. This monumentality of his powerful works challenges our bodies. His installation of overwhelming and numerous works are built as to give us a strong feeling of commitment to his universe and to our world. We lose and find ourselves at will. His evocations of literature through allusive texts of beloved poets and writers move our minds and enlarge our own vision and references. It helps us to understand our own world and memories, and to explore the complexity of our origins. The materiality of his media, his infinite esthetic of Arte Povera and neo-expressionist art speak intensively to our senses. Intricate accretions and strata, accumulations of media and inclusions of diverse elements define a spatial and visual landscape of its own.

Dokumenta 2007, Grand Palais Paris

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Crítica:*«Faith, Hope, Love» series
The propeller is a symbol of flight and therefore of transcendence yet it is made of lead and cannot take off. If it were to fly it would describe a helix, this is the shape of DNA but it is also a Dionysian sign of transcendence. This spiral appears in the form the snake on the staff of Hermes the messenger of the gods and the bringer of healing from the other side. These and many other clues reveal Kiefer's constant theme, which raises basic questions of being, of mind and matter, spirit and body, and dreaming of transcending these boundaries.

The three blades of the propeller are inscribed with the three virtues; faith, hope, and love. Three is repeated again and again in the composition. He has attached three lead rocks, it includes reference to the three elements of earth, fire and water, as well as the land, the sea and the sky. Three is a number with mystical connotations and multiplied by itself it gives the order of the celestial hierarchies.
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«Let a thousand flowers bloom» series
Kiefer based this painting, part of a series, on extensive photographic records he made during his travels through China in 1993. He became fascinated by the deteriorating statues of Mao Zedong that had been erected across the country. Kiefer makes the saluting figure of Mao a central motif throughout the series. In this painting, Mao is shown in a field of narcotic poppies, suggesting the willful forgetfulness of political ideology.Winter Landscape A stream of blood connects the head suspended in the sky with a bleak scene of snow-covered earth with spots of blood. This barren landscape, evoking suffering caused by war, could be a battlefield, a symbolic evocation of World War II.Brünnhilde Sleeps Kiefer took this photograph of the French actress Catherine Deneuve in 1969 while he was watching François Truffaut's film "La Sirène du Mississippi" (Mississippi Mermaid). The movie is about a deceitful mail-order bride who comes to America to marry a plantation owner. Kiefer was amused by the idea of portraying Brünnhilde, the typically corpulent, armored heroine of Wagner's opera, as the thin, sexy French movie star.
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My Father Pledged Me a Sword In the mid-1970s and early 1980s Kiefer made a number of paintings, watercolors, composite woodcuts, and books on themes from ancient German mythology as interpreted by the German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Kiefer was particularly inspired by ancient Germanic legends as retold in Wagner's four-opera cycle "The Ring of the Nibelung."
In "The Valkyrie," the second opera of Wagner's "Ring" cycle, the hero Siegmund, in need of a weapon to fight the unwanted husband of his sister--and lover--Sieglinde, cries out: "Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater" ("My father pledged me a sword"), the words that appear just under the horizon here.
Nothung (literally, "needful") is the powerful sword thrust into an ash tree by Wotan, chief of the gods, in the second opera of Richard Wagner's four-opera cycle "The Ring of the Nibelung." Instead of the ash tree, Kiefer has placed the sword on a cliff in a Norwegian fjord lit by the midnight sun.
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Parsifal I The Parsifal cycle comprises four large paintings, of which three are owned by Tate Gallery. The titles refer to Richard Wagner’s last opera Parsifal and its source in a 13th century romance by Wolfram von Eschenbach, which was based on the legend of the Holy Grail. The setting for this painting is Kiefer’s attic studio. The presence of a baby’s cot points to the birth and early life of the hero Parsifal. It also suggests that the artist’s studio is a place of genesis.Parsifal II This painting refers to Parsifal’s defeat of the evil knight Ither, whose name appears beside his broken, blood-spattered sword. Parsifal’s mother, Herzelayde, had tried to raise her son in ignorance of the violent chivalry of his ancestors. Her efforts failed, however, and Parsifal, whose sword is depicted here as gleaming and intact, went on to become a knight. Kiefer may have seen a parallel between Parsifal’s peaceful upbringing and the attitude of the post-war generation in Germany, scarred by the brutality of their country’s recent history.Parsifal III Of the three Parsifal paintings displayed here, this one most resembles a stage set, with a spear occupying centre stage. It also includes a roll call of the chief players in the Parsifal saga: Guramet, the hero's father; Titurel, the ruler of the Grail; Amfortas, Titurel's son; Klingsor, a magician; and Kundry, a seductress. Parsifal's name appears on the window in reverse as 'Fal-parsi'. It was Parsifal's task to recover the spear from Klingsor so that peace could be restored to the kingdom of the Grail. But Kiefer is not entirely focused on the mythological past. The inscribed names (upper left) of the Baader Meinhof terrorist faction who disrupted the peace of post-war Germany jolt the viewer into contemporary history.Lilith This horrific vision of urban sprawl was inspired by Kiefer’s visit to Sao Paulo in Brazil. Tangled copper wiring signals the breakdown of communication. The city is engulfed in an apocalyptic haze, which Kiefer created by spreading dust and earth across the painting, then burning parts of its surface. According to Hebrew mythology, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, a seductive and demonic airborne spirit. In Kiefer’s painting, Lilith seems to bring destruction from the air upon Oscar Niemeyer’s modernist buildings.
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«Stone Halls» series: AthanorThis painting belongs to a series inspired by Nazi architecture. Its compelling image is based upon the outdoor courtyard of Adolf Hitler’s Chancellery in Berlin, designed by Albert Speer. The dark grid of the flagstones recalls the railroad tracks that took millions of Jews and other “undesirables” to concentration camps.
“Athanor” means a self-feeding furnace, said to have been used by medieval alchemists to transform common substances into nobler material, such as base metals into gold. Although the goal of the alchemist was physical, the alchemical process was sometimes used in the Middle Ages to describe the spiritual quest by which the soul seeks perfection and becomes one with God. Likewise, with his provocative painting, Kiefer becomes the alchemist, literally using fire (a blowtorch) to symbolically purify and transform the symbols of Nazi Germany into hope for the future of humanity.

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«Stone Halls» series: Shulamite
Then come the Stone Halls from 1983, which generally allude to specific examples of Nazi architecture, such as a funeral vault for German soldiers in Shulamite. In a memorial with many layers of interpretation, Kiefer inverts the meaning, painting the Jewish heroine Shulamith from the famous poem "Death Fugue" written by Paul Celan in 1945.
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Broken Flowers and Grass The title of this work is taken from an eloquent love poem by the German lyric poet Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230), whose subjects range from sensuous love to the political issues of his time. In the poem, the female narrator describes how the bed of flowers on which she and her lord made love was marked (or broken) by the impression of their bodies.
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Varus In the 1st century AD, Roman military might was seemingly invincible. Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar had conquered Gaul and extended Roman influence eastwards across the Rhine. Arminius (Hermann), the Germanic tribal chief of the Cherusci, was one of many Germanic auxiliaries in the pay of the Roman army. Returning to his home country circa 7 BC, he exploited the trust of the Roman governor Varus to plan a rebellion. The revolt finally took place in 9 AD, led by a vast alliance of Cherusci and other northern tribes. Three Roman legions (18,000 men) were decimated in the Teutoburg forest around the city of Detmold in northwest Germany, between the rivers Ems and Weser. The victory forced the Romans to re-establish their frontier on the Rhine, and halted the Latinisation of Germany for several centuries. Arminius was hailed by Tacitus as the 'liberator of Germania'. The Hermannschlacht became part of Germany's national legend. Anselm Kiefer is particularly interested in the Cherusci revolt – a central pillar of the construct of German unity – and has often depicted the story in woodcuts, following a well-established German artistic tradition.
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Nigredo The dramatically dense surface of Nigredo (1984) contains both lyricism and irony. Comprised of layers of straw, shellac, and paint over a photograph, it represents a charred landscape upon which a glimmer of sun intimates the possibility of cultural rebirth.