Anselm Kiefer
‘Nigredo’
Oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, and straw on photograph and woodcut, mounted on canvas
330.2 × 555 cm Painted in 1984
Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA
Anselm Kiefer was born on 8 March 1945 and is a German painter, photographer and sculptor. His paintings often utilise raw materials such as board, card, straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. Words and Poetry play a central theme in many of Kiefer’s works, as well as German history and mythology. Kiefer delves into the horror of the German Holocaust exploring controversial topics with his large scale and thought provoking works. The paintings seek to understand the past and lay trails through shared history, his works are symbolic and powerful. German by birth, Kiefer lives and works in France.
I am at first struck by the huge scale of this painting; it envelops the viewer in its sheer size and depth. The horizon is high, the viewer looks up and into the distant land, the painting almost topples onto you. The paint is thick and impasto with bold and effective mark making. The earth rises up to greet you and the muddy stubble field stretches to the distant horizon, you are enveloped by a Wintery haze and you can practically feel the cold rising from the land surrounding you.
The painting is very large, measuring over 5 metres by 3 metres, the landscape is Wintery and barren in feel and the high horizon line emphasises the enormity of the land, reinforced by the sheer scale of this work. The foreground is both heavily marked and highly textured; the use of raw materials reinforces the earthy feel of the painting, adding weight and depth. The barren field with its harvested crops stretches away into the distance, the land gently undulates and curves, the ground is frosted and dark and contrasts with the leaden blue and grey sky, which is only visible for the top portion of the painting. The colours used are earthy and cold, dark sepias and umbers merging with bronze and gold, the frosty highlights on the ground mirror the cold hues of the sky above. The eye is lead to the distant horizon where Kiefer has written the word ‘Nigredo’, the path leading to self knowledge, the dark and chaotic depths of the unconscious mind.
Kiefer said: “Nothing in the world has one sense only, Truth is in a flux. I would never say I am a pessimist or optimist. I would say I’m desperate, because I do not know why I am here. We do not know. We cannot know...more we know, less we know...in this desperate situation I try to give, to create for myself to survive”.
The painting is a balance of structured composition and wild abandon. The painting is composed in a way that gives depth and evokes impressions of my own Norfolk landscapes that surround me. The painting is highly textured with its mark making and energetic brush strokes, paint drips down the canvas in a primordial way, the painting is chaotic yet harmonious, a balance of light and dark, a series of oppositions with a Winters landscape.
I think it’s a powerful and emotional painting; I like the fluidity and energy in the work, also the freedom of techniques used, the thickly applied impasto creates texture and an almost 3-d effect. I also find the painting poetic and visually challenging and interesting. The painting makes a striking statement, I love the boldness and muted palette of earth tones, like a cold Winters day, a walk through my own territory, a remembered landscape.
