AMSTERDAM (AP) — When he was simply 17 years outdated, German artist Anselm Kiefer retraced the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh from the Netherlands by means of Belgium and into France.
Now, greater than half a century later, the museum named for the Dutch grasp is becoming a member of forces for the primary time with the neighboring Stedelijk trendy and up to date artwork museum in Amsterdam to stage a blockbuster exhibition of Kiefer’s work, titled “Sag mir wo die Blumen sind,” a reference to people singer Pete Seeger’s iconic pacifist anthem “Where have all the flowers gone?”
Kiefer mentioned he didn’t got down to make an solely anti-war exhibition, regardless that he carefully follows world occasions together with the battle triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I don’t say ‘I do now an exhibition against the war.’ This I don’t do because this is a program; I’m not a programmatic artist,” he said. “I do what is in me, what has to come out. And that is about all kinds of things, about the dead, about the war.”
Kiefer’s generally bleak work, rooted in rising up in post-World Battle II Germany, won’t instantly really feel carefully associated to Van Gogh’s vibrant and richly coloured landscapes and vases of sunflowers.
However check out Kiefer’s 2019 “The Crows,” alongside Van Gogh’s 1890 “Wheatfield with Crows,” and the inspiration for the German’s work jumps from the wall.
The brooding black birds aren’t the one shared topics that the 2 artists depict.
Considered one of Van Gogh’s most well-known inspirations — sunflowers — additionally seem in Kiefer’s works.
An enormous dried sunflower hangs the wrong way up in a glass cupboard, shedding its seeds on a e-book comprised of lead sheets, whereas “Sol Invictus” exhibits a sunflower towering over the artist, who’s mendacity in a yoga place generally known as the corpse pose.
The present additionally consists of a few of his sketches from his journey retracing Van Gogh’s footsteps.
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The 79-year-old German artist has an extended relationship not simply with Van Gogh, but in addition with the Stedelijk and Dutch collectors who purchased a few of his early works. The Stedelijk is displaying early items equivalent to a sculpture of an aeroplane resembling a B-1 bomber that’s fabricated from lead and known as “Journey to the end of the Night.”
The centerpiece of the Stedelijk is the set up for which the present is known as. Constructed up across the museum’s central staircase, it options paint-splattered garments on hangers and flower petals spilling down work and into piles on the ground, amongst many issues.
Kiefer mentioned that he wrote one of many strains within the Seeger track, which was later additionally sung in German by Marlene Dietrich, on the wall as a part of the set up: “Who will ever learn?”
“This sentence makes the song philosophical,” he instructed reporters. “, as a result of we can not perceive. We can not perceive, for instance, that at present issues occurred in (19)33 on the planet.”
Requested concerning the rise of the far-right Various for Germany social gathering that surged in final month’s German election, he mentioned: “It’s horrible.”
The massive central work is made up of an extended listing of elements together with emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, golf leaf, sediment of electrolysis, dried flowers, straw, material and metal.
The straw options in lots of Kiefer’s work, giving them a fancy floor that generally echoes Van Gogh’s daring brush strokes.
“He’s working like a type of … alchemist reworking materials into an artwork,” curator Edwin Becker of the Van Gogh Museum instructed The Related Press.
The exhibition opens March 7 and runs till June 9 on the Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum.
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