Anselm Kiefer, who was born in 1945, is one of Germany's most important and also most controversial contemporary artists. His Stone Halls from 1983 sparked a heated debate because of their unmistakeable references to the architecture of National Socialism. His work deals not only with German heroic epics and German history but also with archaic myths from Mesopotamia, historic men of action like Alexander the Great, the cosmology of the Rosicrucians and Jewish mysticism such as the 7 Heavenly Palaces from the Sefer Hekhalot. Creation and destruction, death and resurrection, timelessness and the here and now lie close together in his huge paintings. At times, Kiefer's reworking of myth and history in art possesses shockingly prophetic features.
The 7 Heavenly Palaces is the first major solo exhibition of Anselm Kiefer's paintings in the German-speaking world since 1991!
