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Extended through September 1, 2017

Anselm Kiefer

Transition from Cool to Warm

May 5–September 1, 2017
West 21st Street, New York

Installation view Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Rob McKeever

Works Exhibited

Anselm Kiefer, aller Tage Abend, aller Abende Tag (The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings), 2014 Watercolor on paper, 33 × 24 ½ inches (83.6 × 62.3 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Charles Duprat

Anselm Kiefer, aller Tage Abend, aller Abende Tag (The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings), 2014

Watercolor on paper, 33 × 24 ½ inches (83.6 × 62.3 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Charles Duprat

Anselm Kiefer, aller Tage Abend, aller Abende Tag (The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings), 2014 Watercolor on paper, 42 ⅛ × 29 ¾ inches (107 × 75.5 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, aller Tage Abend, aller Abende Tag (The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings), 2014

Watercolor on paper, 42 ⅛ × 29 ¾ inches (107 × 75.5 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Les extases féminines (The Feminine Ecstasies), 2013 Watercolor on paper, 65 ¾ × 60 ⅝ inches (167 × 154 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Les extases féminines (The Feminine Ecstasies), 2013

Watercolor on paper, 65 ¾ × 60 ⅝ inches (167 × 154 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Extases féminines (Feminine Ecstasies), 2013 Watercolor on paper, 26 × 20 inches (66 × 50.7 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Charles Duprat

Anselm Kiefer, Extases féminines (Feminine Ecstasies), 2013

Watercolor on paper, 26 × 20 inches (66 × 50.7 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Charles Duprat

Anselm Kiefer, Aurora, 2013 Watercolor on paper, 28 × 20 ⅛ inches (71 × 51 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Aurora, 2013

Watercolor on paper, 28 × 20 ⅛ inches (71 × 51 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, aller Tage Abend, aller Abende Tag (The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings), 2013 Watercolor on paper, 20 ⅛ × 13 ¾ inches (51 × 35 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, aller Tage Abend, aller Abende Tag (The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings), 2013

Watercolor on paper, 20 ⅛ × 13 ¾ inches (51 × 35 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (The Waves of Sea and Love), 2017 Oil, emulsion, acrylic, and lead on canvas, 74 ⅞ × 149 ⅝ × 17 inches (190 × 380 × 43 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (The Waves of Sea and Love), 2017

Oil, emulsion, acrylic, and lead on canvas, 74 ⅞ × 149 ⅝ × 17 inches (190 × 380 × 43 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Schlange (Snake), 2017 Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, clay, and metal on canvas, 149 ⅝ × 110 ¼ × 9 ⅞ inches (380 × 280 × 25 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Schlange (Snake), 2017

Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, clay, and metal on canvas, 149 ⅝ × 110 ¼ × 9 ⅞ inches (380 × 280 × 25 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Aurora, 2015–17 Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, and electrolysis sediment on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ × 3 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 × 9 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Aurora, 2015–17

Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, and electrolysis sediment on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ × 3 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 × 9 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, des Malers Atelier (The Painter’s Studio), 2016 Oil, emulsion, acrylic, and shellac on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ × 2 inches (280 × 380 × 5 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, des Malers Atelier (The Painter’s Studio), 2016

Oil, emulsion, acrylic, and shellac on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ × 2 inches (280 × 380 × 5 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Ignis sacer, 2016 Oil, acrylic, and emulsion on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ × 3 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 × 9 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, Ignis sacer, 2016

Oil, acrylic, and emulsion on canvas, 110 ¼ × 149 ⅝ × 3 ⅝ inches (280 × 380 × 9 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, For Segantini: die bösen Mütter (For Segantini: The Bad Mothers), 2011–12 Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, wood, metal, lead, and electrolysis sediment on canvas, 110 ¼ × 181 ⅛ × 21 ⅝ inches (280 × 460 × 55 cm)© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer, For Segantini: die bösen Mütter (For Segantini: The Bad Mothers), 2011–12

Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, wood, metal, lead, and electrolysis sediment on canvas, 110 ¼ × 181 ⅛ × 21 ⅝ inches (280 × 460 × 55 cm)
© Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

About

What interests me is the transformation, not the monument. I don’t construct ruins, but I feel ruins are moments when things show themselves. A ruin is not a catastrophe. It is the moment when things can start again.
—Anselm Kiefer

Gagosian is pleased to present new paintings, artists’s books, and watercolors by Anselm Kiefer.

Employing broad-ranging and erudite literary sources, from the Old and New Testaments to the poetry of Paul Celan, Kiefer’s oeuvre makes palpable the movement and destruction of human life and, at the same time, the persistence of the delicate, lyrical, or divine.

Central to the exhibition are more than forty unique artists’s books, their pages painted with gesso to mimic marble, displayed in an installation of glass vitrines. Erotically charged female nudes and faces emerge from the pages. Artists’s books are an integral part of Kiefer’s oeuvre; over time they have ranged in scale from the intimate to the monumental, and in materials, from lead to dried plant matter. In this selection of books, the sequences of narrative information and visual effect evoke the fragile endurance of the sacred and the spiritual through the female figures on the marbled pages. They are a reminder perhaps of the sculptures of Auguste Rodin, and even of Michelangelo’s belief that his figures were “freed” from the stone with which he worked.

Read more

Transition from Cool to Warm

Transition from Cool to Warm

Art historian James Lawrence explores Anselm Kiefer’s latest body of work.

Jerome Rothenberg in a chair

In Conversation
Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein

Gagosian and Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center hosted a conversation between poets Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein inside Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Rothenberg and Bernstein explored some of the themes that occupy Kiefer—Jewish mysticism, the poetry of Paul Celan, and the formulation of a global poetics in response to the Holocaust—in a discussion and readings of their poetry.

Michael Govan and Anselm Kiefer

In Conversation
Anselm Kiefer and Michael Govan

On the occasion of his exhibition Anselm Kiefer: Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles, the artist spoke with Michael Govan about his works that elaborate on themes of loss, history, and redemption.

Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Winter 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022

The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Anselm Kiefer

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Questionnaire: Anselm Kiefer

In this ongoing series, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has devised a set of thirty-seven questions that invite artists, authors, musicians, and other visionaries to address key elements of their lives and creative practices. Respondents make a selection from the larger questionnaire and reply in as many or as few words as they desire. For the fourth installment, we are honored to present the artist Anselm Kiefer.

Darkly lit road, trees, and building exterior at La Ribaute, Barjac, France.

Anselm Kiefer: Architect of Landscape and Cosmology

Jérôme Sans visits La Ribaute in Barjac, France, the vast studio-estate transformed by Anselm Kiefer over the course of decades. The labyrinthine site, now open to the public, stands as a total work of art, reflecting through its grounds, pavilions, and passageways major themes in Kiefer’s oeuvre: regeneration, mythology, memory, and more. 

News

Photo: Georges Poncet

Artist Spotlight

Anselm Kiefer

June 22–28, 2022

Anselm Kiefer’s monumental body of work represents a microcosm of collective memory, visually encapsulating a broad range of cultural, literary, and philosophical allusions. Drawing from sources that range from the Old and New Testaments, Kabbalah mysticism, Norse mythology, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, Kiefer makes palpable the complexities of human history.

Photo: Georges Poncet

Anselm Kiefer: Transition from Cool to Warm (New York: Gagosian, 2017)

Online Reading

Anselm Kiefer
Transition from Cool to Warm

Anselm Kiefer: Transition from Cool to Warm is available for online reading from May 31 through July 1 as part of the From the Library series. The catalogue documents the artist’s exhibition at Gagosian New York in 2017. Central to this publication are more than forty watercolors made between 2012 and 2016, marking Kiefer’s return to the medium after forty years. The exhibition also featured over forty unique artist books and nine monumental landscape paintings, which are included in the catalogue. Essays by novelist Karl Ove Knausgård and art historian James Lawrence are included, along with an interview by art journalist Louisa Buck and the artist.

Anselm Kiefer: Transition from Cool to Warm (New York: Gagosian, 2017)