Anselm Kiefer

Yvon Lambert, Paris
Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above in 2005)

The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration although the overall tonality is brighter in the original work. The surface is uneven and there are some light cracks inherent to the materials and technique. There are six vertical lines, visible in the catalogue illustration, inherent to the artist's technique. There is a small lack of material located 46 cm from the left edge and 26 cm from the lower. This work is in very good original condition.
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Fig. 1
Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey among Oak Trees, circa 1809 

“What we cannot talk about should be sung. This is what Mozart believed was the motto of opera. What cannot be articulated by song or speech should be expressed in signs. These signs probably precede thought.  It is the beginning of theory. And from this point of view, Anselm Kiefer is on the one hand an artist and a painter  and on the other a theoretician and a conceiver of signs, just as a composer sees himself as a conceiver of sounds. This is the story of visible and invisible images.”
Alexander Kluge

 The majestic painting Die Ungeborenen with its reference to the myths and legends at the origins of humanity, is exemplary of Anselm Kiefer’s work in many ways. The artist often explores the hybrid sphere of not belonging, dealing both with questions of birth on a human scale and the notion of the beginnings of humanity. With his representation of a tree of life bearing small reduced dresses cast in lead, Kiefer creates a complex work with several layers of meaning. One of these is the idea of hatching. As in a dream, the branches of the tree seem to grow, giving life to inanimate matter. The artist plays with techniques and materials in order to treat the different themes linked with philosophy, theology and history that he has explored over the past forty years.