Top 33 Quotes & Sayings by Anselm Kiefer

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German artist Anselm Kiefer.

Last updated on December 22, 2024.

Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan have played a role in developing Kiefer's themes of German history and the horrors of the Holocaust, as have the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah.

German - Artist | Born: March 8, 1945

Source: Wikipedia

The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.

Anselm Kiefer

I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.

Anselm Kiefer

When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.

Anselm Kiefer

I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.

Anselm Kiefer

But we should also not forget the difference between what first motivated me and the work that is the result.

Anselm Kiefer

I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all.

Anselm Kiefer

Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.

Anselm Kiefer

Buying art is not understanding art.

Anselm Kiefer

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.

Anselm Kiefer

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

Anselm Kiefer

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

Anselm Kiefer

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

Anselm Kiefer

If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.

Anselm Kiefer

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment.

Anselm Kiefer

Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.

Anselm Kiefer

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

Anselm Kiefer

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

Anselm Kiefer

Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.

Anselm Kiefer

I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing.

Anselm Kiefer

History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.

Anselm Kiefer

History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.

Anselm Kiefer

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

Anselm Kiefer

I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.

Anselm Kiefer

The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.

Anselm Kiefer

Art is difficult. Its not entertainment.

Anselm Kiefer

As a child I had no toys; our house was bombed, but there were lots of bricks. Ruins are wonderful because they are the beginning of something new, you can do something with them.

Anselm Kiefer

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.

Anselm Kiefer

I am interested in reconstructing symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven.

Anselm Kiefer

I am of the opinion that there are artists and non-artists. I think that this is the way it always was and always will be. I do not believe that we are in the center of the world. It is possible that there are gods who do not relate to human. As an artist, I believe that it is possible to depict these forces.

Anselm Kiefer

When knowledge becomes rigid, it stops living.

Anselm Kiefer

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow.

Anselm Kiefer

Art maybe the only space where an indvidual can be utterly free to question himself, as well as his relationship to his God

Anselm Kiefer

I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history.

Anselm Kiefer