Anselm Kiefer, Gateshead

About

Anselm Kiefer is among the most important post-war German artists. His practice, from the late 1960s onwards, attest to the manner in which Kiefer has worked with the conviction that art could heal a traumatised nation and a divided world. Since the 1980s his focus has expanded from that of Germany’s role in civilisation to the fate of art and culture in general, opening out to include ideas of national identity and collective memory, but also occult symbolism, theology and mysticism. The exhibition includes more recent works that address some of these themes. In the words of historian Simon Schama, they present ‘a resonant meditation on the instability of built grandeur’.

Among the works to be included in this exhibition at the BALTIC were three paintings from the artist's early 'Parsifal' series (1973), drawn from Richard Wagner’s last opera of the same name, a work hugely influential upon Germanic culture. In 'Palette' (1981), Kiefer revealed the problematic legacy inherited by artists in post-war Germany: the artist's palette hangs from a single burning thread evoking shame, loss and the apparent impossibility of artistic creation.