Anselm Kiefer: Monumental and Confrontational

Anselm Kiefer - Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven - 1970 - Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on joined paper - 15 3/4 x 18 7/8in. (40 x 47.9cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (click photo for larger image) Anselm Kiefer's powerful canvases were groundbreaking at a time when painting was considered all but dead as a medium. Kiefer (born 1945) is most known for his subject matter dealing with German history and myth, particularly as it relates to the Holocaust. These works forced his contemporaries to deal with Germany's past in an era when acknowledgment of Nazism was taboo. Kiefer incorporates heavy impasto and uncommon materials into his pieces, such as lead, glass shards, dried flowers, and strands of hay, many of which reference various aspects of history and myth, German and otherwise. He diverged from Minimalism and abstraction to develop new representational and symbolic languages.

The work featured here “re-imagines the now-miniscule figure of the artist in a green military coat in the midst of a vast, snow-dusted field.” It is part of a series of watercolors related to the photographs Kiefer staged in 1969, reenacting the Nazi salute.  Kiefer has said, "Each man has his own dome, his own perceptions, his own theories. There is no one God for all."