Anselm Kiefer: The Complete Story
Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) is the German artist of vast, scarred paintings built from lead, straw, ash and earth, made to force his country to look at what it wanted to forget. He was born in March 1945, in the last weeks of the war he has painted ever since.
His pictures are heavy in every sense. Some literally cannot be lifted without machinery.
Anselm Kiefer at a glance
1945. Born in Donaueschingen in March, weeks before the war in Europe ended, in a Germany already in ruins.
1969. Made the Occupations photographs, posing with the forbidden salute across Europe as an accusation.
1992. Left Germany for Barjac in southern France and began turning 35 hectares into La Ribaute.
2007. Became the first living artist since Braque to receive a permanent commission at the Louvre.
2021. Installed permanent works inside the Panthéon in Paris.
Born in the rubble
Kiefer arrived in Donaueschingen as the Reich collapsed, and grew up playing in bombed ruins, which he has called his first building blocks.
In 1969, as a student, he detonated his career with Occupations: photographs of himself performing the banned Nazi salute at sites across Europe. Germany was scandalized, which was the point.
Someone had to say the silence out loud.
Lead, straw, ash
From the 1970s he built his mature language: fields of black furrows, burned books cast in lead, straw pressed into paint, names of German myths and Jewish poets written across the sky. His recurring dialogue with the poet Paul Celan, whose Death Fugue haunts painting after painting, turned German landscape into a crime scene that mourns.
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Straw for Margarete
From 1981 Kiefer painted Paul Celan’s Todesfuge into matter: Margarete’s golden hair as real straw pressed into paint.
Straw dries, darkens, and breaks, and he wanted exactly that. The poem is about what Germany burned.
He has kept returning to Celan for over forty years.
Lead from a cathedral roof
When Cologne Cathedral replaced its lead roof, Kiefer bought tons of the old metal.
It became books, bombers, and skies. He calls lead the only material heavy enough to carry history.
Some of his lead books weigh more than the shelves that hold them.
The Louvre, then the Panthéon
In 2007 the Louvre gave him a permanent stair commission, the first living artist so honored since Braque in the 1950s.
In 2021 France asked again, this time for the Panthéon, its mausoleum of national heroes.
The boy born in the rubble of one country ended up built into the monuments of another.
The myth to retire
The accusation followed him for years: he uses Nazi imagery for shock. Time has settled it.
The salutes of 1969 were aimed at amnesia, not nostalgia, and half a century of work since has made him the most sustained painter of historical memory alive.
Germany eventually agreed: the country that once booed him gave him its highest honours.
A studio the size of a town
In 1993 he left Germany for Barjac in southern France, where he spent decades transforming La Ribaute, a 40-hectare former silk factory, into a landscape of concrete towers, tunnels and buried libraries, opened to visitors in 2022. In 2020 France gave him the Pantheon: permanent vitrines installed in the national mausoleum, an honour almost never extended to a living foreign artist.
Where to see Kiefer
La Ribaute at Barjac can be visited in season. Museum-wise, the Centre Pompidou, Tate, MoMA and the Guggenheim Bilbao all hold major works, and his Pantheon vitrines are on permanent view in Paris.
The Anselm Kiefer questions that keep coming up
What is Anselm Kiefer known for? Monumental paintings and installations about German history and memory, built from lead, straw and ash.
What were the Occupations photographs? His 1969 series performing the banned Nazi salute at European sites, an attack on postwar silence.
Where does Kiefer work? In France since 1993, including La Ribaute, his 40-hectare studio estate at Barjac.
Where can I see his work? The Pantheon in Paris, La Ribaute at Barjac, and museums from the Pompidou to Bilbao.
Why does Kiefer use straw? It comes from Paul Celan’s Todesfuge, where Margarete’s golden hair stands against Shulamith’s ash. Straw also decays, and the decay is part of the meaning.
Where does Kiefer’s lead come from? Partly from the replaced roof of Cologne Cathedral, bought by the ton. He has said lead is the only material heavy enough for the weight of history.
More secrets to unlock
A city of ruins, on purpose
At La Ribaute he built dozens of concrete towers and kilometres of tunnels, then filled them with paintings and lead books and walked away to a new studio near Paris. He calls his works ruins from the moment they are made. He built himself a city of them.