Education
He went to art colleges in Freiburg and Karlsruhe, and had contact with Joseph Beuys at the state art academy in Diisseldorf.
He went to art colleges in Freiburg and Karlsruhe, and had contact with Joseph Beuys at the state art academy in Diisseldorf.
His works can hardly be compared to the those of any of his German painter contemporaries. He created landscapes on monumental canvases in earthy tones, and combined oil, acrylic and shellac with diverse materials such as gold, clay, wood, fabric, straw, barbed wire, and lead. Handwritten names and terms make reference to German history and Nazism. Kiefer subsequently turned apocalyptic; he attacked his canvases with an axe or retouched them with a blowtorch to give the pictures a desolate air. The works appear enigmatic in their aesthetic obsession, and leave the viewer with a series of open questions in relation to his engage-ment with history.
In the nineties, Kiefer moved away from modern German history in order to take up more universal subject matters, dealing with philosophy, religion and mysticism, literature and poetry. In addition to the painting that holds a special place in his oeuvre, his work includes photographs and artist books, sculptures, woodcuts, installations, and glass vitrines.