The art of Anselm Kiefer: “Becoming the Sea”

Even on a casual walk, German artist Anselm Kiefer is always searching for inspiration. “Look at this tree,” he said walking alongside the Mississippi River. “This is a fantastic tree, you know?”

And here in St. Louis, Missouri, it’s an American river that’s fired his imagination. He said, “This river goes through America, and so with this conscience I have an inner overview of America, of the continent, of the world.”

Kiefer has turned those reflections into a series of paintings, each three stories tall. They are now holding court at the Saint Louis Art Museum, home to an Anselm Kiefer retrospective. Dozens of Kiefer works are on display, but it’s these monumental canvases that are the showstoppers.

The paintings depict the Mississippi and Europe’s Rhine River – waterways brimming with history, symbolizing the cycle of life. Kiefer said the inspiration for their name, “Becoming the Sea,” came from Beat Generation poet Gregory Corso: “Spirit is life … like a river unafraid of becoming the sea.”

“You know, a river is something special; a river dissolves itself in the sea,” he said. “And it’s not afraid of this. As I am not afraid of my death, you know?”

Mortality is a common theme for Kiefer. Born in 1945 in Germany, he grew up in the ruins of World War II, and the aftermath of the Holocaust. It’s a chapter many Germans tried to forget. “You know, after the war, there was not so much knowledge about what happened,” he said. “The Germans, they put it underneath the carpet. Nobody spoke about [it].”

Kiefer spent his career breaking through that silence, like when, as a young art student, he photographed himself giving the Nazi salute, not as an endorsement, but as a reckoning.

Asked about the role of the artist in society, he said, “If the artist is in the world, like I am in the world, as I look what happens, then automatically you have a role.” 

Over the decades, Kiefer continued to explore themes of memory and loss – mostly with abstract landscapes, and materials. As Kiefer showed “Sunday Morning” in 2018, at his studio outside of Paris, melted lead and fire are normal sightings in his work. So is a bit of chemistry, creating unexpected colors. 

Today, Kiefer is one of the most prolific living artists, at the peak of his career, with works selling for millions, and in museums around the world. It would be a proud moment for most, but Anselm Kiefer has always had his own way of seeing things.

I asked him, “So at 80, what are you most proud of in terms of the work you’ve done?”

“You ask strange questions! I am not proud. I am disappointed!” he laughed. “I’m really disappointed. Because every morning I go in the studio and say, ‘Oh, what I have done yesterday?’ You know, and then I continue. I continue. Proud? No, no. I don’t know this word for me, proud.”

     
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Story produced by Sara Kugel. Editor: Lauren Barnello.