Anselm Kiefer (born in 1945 in Donaueschingen) is a major post-war German artist, known for his monumental paintings, books, and installations that explore collective memory, German history, and the traumas of the 20th century. His work, often made with heavy and symbolic materials (lead, straw, ash, earth), combines mythology, poetry, and philosophical references—especially to Paul Celan—within an aesthetic of ruin and stratification. A central figure of Neo-Expressionism, he helped reopen a direct debate on the Nazi past from the late 1960s onward, and later developed a spectacular body of work between Germany and France, where he has lived and worked since the 1990s.
Anselm Kiefer, photographiert von Summer Taylor