Anselm Kiefer: The Women Alchemists Solo exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan

A monumental tribute to the forgotten women alchemists: Anselm Kiefer’s new site-specific work, conceived especially for the Sala delle Cariatidi, reflecting on history, painting, and feminine memory.

The Women Alchemists unfolds a cycle of thirty-eight large-scale canvases, created by Anselm Kiefer to resonate with the dramatic beauty of the Sala delle Cariatidi at Palazzo Reale: a majestic setting which continues to evoke a past of both splendor and ruin, marked by the scars of the 1943 bombing.
Each painting offers itself as an act of resurrection: an emerging identity, a story, a matter transfigured.

Interpreting the alchemical motto Obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius (‘the obscure through the more obscure, the unknown through the even more unknown’), Kiefer invites visitors into an emotionally charged, almost initiatory experience.