KIEFER, ANSELM
1945 Donaueschingen

Title: Berenice.
Date: 2002.


Description: Paint and collage over black-and-white photograph. 101.5 x 74.5cm. Framed



Provenance:
- - Yvon Lambert, Paris (label)

- Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia (directly from the artist)



- - High symbolic power through selected variety in material

- His inclusion of mythological themese always is a confrontation with the German past, as well

- Kiefer was honoured with the prize of the Deutschen Nationalstiftung and the Great Cross of Merit with star



Anselm Kiefer is regarded as one of the most influential artistic figures of contemporary art. Born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, he has, since the 1970s, developed a body of work renowned for its monumental paintings and installations, engaging with themes such as history, mythology and memory. Throughout his career, Kiefer has explored German history and culture, confronting the complexities of national identity and the burden of the past. His works are distinguished by a powerful materiality and deeply interwoven symbolism. Kiefer works with lead, ash, earth, hair and organic materials — substances that not only represent transformation and transience but render them physically tangible. His works frequently depict vast landscapes, architectural ruins and symbolic imagery that address themes of destruction, rebirth and the passage of time.

The work Berenice from 2002 exemplifies the artist’s poetic yet archaic visual language. Above a scene of architectural ruins rendered in cool grey-blue tones rises a nocturnal sky featuring a surreal formation reminiscent of a comb or staircase. From this structure emerge long, dark strands of hair that extend freely across the pictorial field, traversing the composition.

The title Berenice refers to the Hellenistic queen whose sacrificial offering of hair, according to ancient tradition, was elevated to the heavens as a constellation. Berenice, or Berenike, lived from approximately 270 to 221 BC and was the consort of the Egyptian king Ptolemy III. When he departed for the Third Syrian War, she vowed to the goddess of love, Aphrodite, that she would sacrifice her magnificent hair should her husband return victorious and unharmed. Coma Berenices (“Berenice’s Hair”) remains the only modern constellation named after a historical individual. During the Hellenistic period, in 245 BC, the constellation was named after Queen Berenice II by the astronomer Conon of Samos and the poet Callimachus. Kiefer translates this mythical moment into a visual language in which sacrifice, transformation and memory merge seamlessly. The material presence of real hair lends the scene an unusual vitality and an almost intimate corporeality, standing in striking contrast to the distanced ruin landscape. Within Kiefer’s oeuvre, Berenice represents a phase of intense engagement with ancient myths as a collective repository of cultural identity. The combination of mythological narrative, architectural elements and organic material is characteristic of his works from the early 2000s





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#Anselm Kiefer #Neo-Expressionism #New History Painting #Germany #Contemporary Art #2000s #Post War.







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