Anselm Kiefer

German, French · b. 1945

Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor whose monumental works confront the history, myth and landscape of postwar Germany. Born in 1945 in the last months of the war, he studied under Peter Dreher and Horst Antes and was encouraged by Joseph Beuys, and came to prominence in the 1980s as a leading figure of Neo-Expressionism. His paintings are built from straw, ash, clay, lead and shellac into thick, scorched surfaces, drawing on Norse and Germanic legend, alchemy, the Kabbalah and the poetry of Paul Celan. He has lived and worked in France since 1992, first at a former silk factory in Barjac and later near Paris, where he continues to work on an architectural scale.