In my pictures I tell stories to show
what is behind the story. I open up a
hole and I go through it.
                                   Anselm Kiefer

In February 2012, Anselm Kiefer, one of the most significant artists of the present day, forms the big opening of the exhibition year in the Essl Museum. A new solo exhibition personally furnished by the collector Karlheinz Essl is on show, with 15 works, among them four new main works from the artist’s latest creative period. Agnes and Karlheinz Essl have been exploring the work of the great German artist for many years and have repeatedly visited him in his studio. In the last ten years the collector couple have acquired a large number of important works. The exhibition grants a very personal collector’s view of the artist; for the first time all of Kiefer’s works in the Essl collection will be made accessible to a wide audience.

Claudia Quinta, 2005 Oil, emulsion, shellac, soil on photograph on cardboard with barbed wire and lead boat and objects 95 x 124 x 28 cm © Anselm Kiefer Photo: courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris	Horlogium (Sternenfall), 2003 Oil, emulsion, acrylic, gypsum plants on canvas; Lead books, cardboard, metal and glass 280 x 500 x 32 cm, 170 x 160 x 140 cm © Anselm Kiefer

For Anselm Kiefer (born in Donaueschingen, Germany, in 1945) the approach to recollection, memory, and particularly also to transience and forgetting, plays a very important role. With his often extensive works, he aims to make time tangible. The large-format, anti-heroic images of nature and histories, with decaying monuments, run down spots and morbid landscapes show a present that has been corroded, ravaged by the past. Against the emptiness Kiefer sets names in awkward handwriting, names of places, of gods, of people, occasionally whole lines of poetry, such as by Ingeborg Bachmann or Paul Celan.

The works in the exhibition reflect various important, fundamental themes of the artist. The monumental work Horologium (Shooting Stars) comes at the beginning of the collecting activity and – together with the Skulptur mit Sternen – leads one to think of the cosmos or the cosmic dimension of our existence. Für Paul Celan refers to Celan’s poem Die Todesfuge [Death Fugue], to the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Dia-Lyse, 2006 Oil, emulsion, shellac and soil on board 285 x 140 x 8 cm © Anselm Kiefer Photo: Lothar Schnepf, Köln	The Fertile Crescent, 2009 Mixed Media on canvas 330 x 762 x 7 cm © Anselm Kiefer Photo: Ulrich Ghezzi courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris · Salzburg

Kiefer refers to literary texts in the new works, too. The title of the work tönend wie des Kalbs haut die Erde [Resounding Like the Calf’s Skin on the Earth] is borrowed from a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin. A mountain landscape raises itself over the scorched earth, a stethoscope appears to track the sound of the earth. The line “Only with wind, with time and with sound”, on the other hand, comes from Ingeborg Bachmann. A turbulent cloud- and seascape is reminiscent of Gustave Corbet, in the upper part of the picture there appears a book made of lead, a frequent motif of Kiefer’s, the symbol of humanity’s collective store of memory.
In the material pictures, Kiefer uses sand, earth, lime, ash, hair, seeds, wire, branches coated in plaster or also textiles. Organic materials as well as the crusty and the crumbling in painting symbolise the fact that a work of art, too, is transient, that change and decay are an inherent part of life.

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue.

Catalogue

The exhibition will be accompanied by a 160-page catalogue, including numerous illustrations, with a foreword by Prof. Karlheinz Essl and texts by Wieland Schmied, Andreas Hoffer, Mela Maresch, Günther Oberhollenzer and Anna Szöke.

Art Education

The art education team offers tours and workshops for the exhibition. The current event calendar can be found under ART EDUCATION >>

Free shuttle bus

Visitors can reach the Essl Museum conveniently by free bus shuttle from Vienna city centre, Albertinaplatz 2 (Tues – Sun, 10 a.m., 12 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and return)

Press photos

Press photos are available upon request at the Press Office or via download from PRESS >>

PRESS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICE

Erwin Uhrmann (head), uhrmann@essl.museum, +43 (0) 2243/370 50 60
Regina Holler-Strobl, holler-strobl@essl.museum, +43 (0) 2243/370 50 62