The exhibition. open 10 September 2010 – 9 January 2011 presents around 90 works ranging from the earliest years after the Academy of Art in Karlsruhe in 1969 and all the way up until today, showing brand new pictures by Kiefer, who in 2008 was honoured with “Der Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels” (The Peace Prize of the German Booksellers), which was thus awarded for the first time to a visual artist.
A central theme of the exhibition is found in the artist’s particular insistence on the relevance of grand narratives. Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) uses myths that to a considerable extent absorb classical material, but which must be called both the myths of the age and his own myths, often with a starting point in the artist’s own traumatized nationality.
Kiefer represents one of the most striking new departures in post-war Germany, and it is this activity over four decades that the museum wants to bring out – not as a narrow chronological development, but as five loosely demarcated themes, each of which clarifies artistic concerns to which Kiefer’s works offer central contributions: New Works, Landscape as Myth, World Time – Life Time, Iconoclasm and The Book.
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is a private foundation.
As a private, state-recognized museum Louisiana is subject to the Museum Act. The museum receives about one third of its operating support from the state; the rest is funded by the museum’s own earnings and sponsors. Louisiana receives no state support for acquisitions of artworks for its collection, and is thus dependent on private donors and foundations.
Image: Grane by Anselm Kiefer. Woodcut with paint and collage on paper mounted on linin, Museum of Modern Art (New York City)
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