Anselm Kiefer

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg
Acquired from the above by the present owner 

This work is in very good condition overall. The painting surface has noticeable craquelure throughout, which is stable and inherent to the artist’s method of working. Under Ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
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Executed in 2005, Dein Haus ritt di Finstere Welle presents an intellectually complex composition in which Kiefer’s unusual working materials coalesce to produce a visual and symbolic blend of mythology, history, and language.  Heaving with matter and suffused with a multiplicity of artistic, historic, and fabled associations, the present work is a monumental display of Kiefer's aesthetic forged from the evisceration of the past and symptomatic of the pyschological affliction of warfare. Through the transformation of quotidian constituents into something of extreme metaphorical significance, the German artist emphasizes the transformative potential of matter to become an object of intensely evocative power.

Kiefer was born just two months before the end of the Second World War, finding himself surrounded by the detritus of conflict's unfathomable loss. During years of sustained allied bombing the inhabitants of the small towns in the Black Forest where Kiefer grew up had fled to the natural shelter of the surrounding wooded areas as their homes were reduced to rubble. And so, deprived of conventional toys, a boyish Kiefer would collect the debris from his neighbourhood to construct small dwellings in which to play. This inextricable connection to post-war Germany left an indelible impression on Kiefer from a young age, leading him to the work of Paul Celan.

The Romanian born German poet Paul Celan has played an instrumental role in the oevre of Anselm Kiefer for much of his career.  Perhaps no body of work is more telling of the impact Celan had on the Kiefer than Dein Haus ritt di finstere Welle (Your House Rode the Dark Wave).  Kiefer draws inspiration from the traumas of contemporary history and the complexities of humanity, most notably exploring the issue of German identity after the atrocities of World War II and the Holocaust. In many ways, Kiefer’s work is a physical representation of the same history Celan’s poetry is imbued with.      

Kiefer's early obsession with construction evidently informed his later artistic career where the parallels of creation and destruction as well as his exaltation of nature have become prolific leitmotifs.  The artist frequently commented that soft metal has a much stronger effect on him than any other material and has become itself a source of ideas. The unique metal also possesses certain qualities that make it a subject unto itself, as Danilo Eccher has commented: "Lead is for Kiefer, in keeping with alchemical tradition, the magic metal which preserves memory; which, with its own soft weight, creates a reduced, weary representation of the world in order to absorb the wounds in its wrinkled skin" (Danilo Eccher, ‘Anselm Kiefer: A Dark Soul’, in: Exh. Cat., Bologna, Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, Anselm Kiefer: Stelle Cadenti, 1999, p. 87).