Anselm Kiefer: Early Works 4-star review
By Evgenia Siokos
Anselm Kiefer was born in the southern German town of Donaueschingen a few months before the end of the Second World War. On the day his mother gave birth to him in the cellar of a local hospital, their house was destroyed in a bombing raid. His very creation was intertwined with the complexities of Germany’s evolution as a state; a theme clearly reflected in Kiefer’s work as he explores Germanic identity from the mythological heroes of the Teutonic age to the anti-heroes of the Third Reich. This exhibition at the Ashmolean focuses on the early years of Kiefer’s career, showcasing 45 works from 1969-1982, and offers an insight into the German artist’s formative interactions with history, literature and philosophy.
The exhibition opens with three recent works, which immediately acclimatise the viewer to Kiefer’s stylistic idiosyncrasies. The frenzied yet architectural impasto, metallic oil-slick colouring, and compositional dynamism of Wer jetzt kein Haus hat (Whoever has no house now, 2023) are typical of the work that Kiefer has become known for. The list of materials for the painting reads: “Emulsion, acrylic oil, shellac, lead, string and chalk on canvas”; such an eclectic list of ingredients is representative of the “process” Kiefer has been refining over the past half-century.
This visual palette cleanser is interrupted by a 2.5m self-portrait of Kiefer peeking out from around the corner. He depicts himself donning his father’s Wehrmacht overcoat and giving the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute, with a toothbrush moustache and round wire-frame spectacles in the manner of Hitler.
This self-portrait, Heroische Sinnbilder (Heroic Symbols, 1970), is part of Kiefer’s notorious “performance” of 1969, Occupations, during which he briefly “occupied” several sites throughout Europe, from the crater of Vesuvius to the Coliseum, delivering that verboten salute; a languid interrogation of the relationship between the long aesthetic shadow of Roman Imperialism and German fascism in a post-war context of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (‘the overcoming of the past’).
