Anselm Kiefer. Livres & xylographies

Anselm Kiefer. Livres & xylographies – The German artist Anselm Kiefer (*1945, Donaueschingen) has long hesitated between writing and painting. If it is the second one that he chooses, it remains that literature occupies a dominating place in his work; the book, by its materiality and its aesthetics, was his first support of creation; the daily writing, consigned in a newspaper, allows him to pose a reflexion, to carry out a research intimately linked to his thought.

The artist’s books that Anselm Kiefer produced from 1968 and 1969 onwards were initially a place for the expression of ideas and associations of thought, and soon became a place of exploration in which the succession of pages made it possible to construct a narrative and inscribe it within a time frame. The subjects which are elaborated there are then resized in the whole of its work and in particular in the xylography. This art of printing allows him to envisage narrative forms in a space completely different from that of the canvas.

L’exposition Anselm Kiefer. Books and Xylographs is a collaboration between the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature in Montricher and the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo. It documents the artist’s links with poetry, myths, Sumerian and biblical stories, fairy tales, history, philosophy, kabbalah and alchemy, through a collection of 27 books dated from 1969 to 2017 accompanied by a selection of xylographs, the most recent ones being presented for the first time.

Catalog co-edited by the Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature and Astrup Fearnley Museet on the occasion of the exhibition Anselm Kiefer. Books and xylographs, February 8-May 12, 2019, distributed by art&fiction publications.