Anselm Kiefer, London

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".

Palm Sunday (2006) is a monumental installation consisting of a felled palm tree and thirty-six steel-and-glass reliquary tablets. This installation went on show in a suite of galleries at the Tate Modern dedicated to the arte povera movement.