Anselm Kiefer Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, 2018-19

The title of Anselm Kiefer’s monumental canvas Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen [ Waves of the Sea and Love ] (2018-19) is derived from a play by the nineteenth-century Austrian writer and poet Franz Grillparzer. The play dramatises the classical story of the Greek priestess Hero and her lover Leander, who swam the Hellespont every night to be with her but eventually drowned. The myth has inspired numerous writers and artists over the centuries. For Kiefer, the ocean conjures up a primitivistic space, which exists before language, with no beginning or end, where time and space take on a cosmological and existential significance. Here, the ‘waves’ materialise across a highly textured canvas, giving the painting a sculptural quality. A sense of the sublime is evident in the epic scale of this work, fully encompassing the space of the viewer as the waves rush forward, as if foreshadowing the fate of Leander who was submerged beneath the water.