Quotes by Anselm Kiefer

About Anselm Kiefer:

Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horror of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead a...

Anselm Kiefer

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

Anselm Kiefer

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.

Anselm Kiefer

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

Anselm Kiefer

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment.

Anselm Kiefer

Buying art is not understanding art.

Anselm Kiefer

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

Anselm Kiefer

Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.

Anselm Kiefer

History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.

Anselm Kiefer

If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.

Anselm Kiefer

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

Anselm Kiefer

History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.

Anselm Kiefer

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

Anselm Kiefer

The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.

Anselm Kiefer

When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.

Anselm Kiefer

I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.

Anselm Kiefer

I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing.

Anselm Kiefer

I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.

Anselm Kiefer

I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.

Anselm Kiefer

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

Anselm Kiefer

Author Bio

  • NameAnselm Kiefer
  • DescriptionGerman painter and sculptor
  • BornMarch 8, 1945
  • CountryGermany
  • ProfessionPainter; Sculptor
  • WorksAthanor
  • AwardsVerdienstkreuz 1. Klasse Des Verdienstordens Der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Verdienstkreuz 1. Klasse Des Verdienstordens Der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; ; Peace Prize Of The German Book Trade; Praemium Imperiale