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
art giving-up believe
I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.
When knowledge becomes rigid, it stops living.
art understanding buying
Buying art is not understanding art.
bears doe forests
I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history.
art together life-is
Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.
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.
art entertainment difficult
Art is difficult. Its not entertainment.
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.
art skills technique
As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow.
depressing political ifs
If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.
art longing art-is
Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.
believe space wonderful
I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing.