Artwork: Anselm Kiefer, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2025
Two major exhibitions centered on Anselm Kiefer’s art are currently showing at the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The title of both, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, comes from the 1955 protest song Where have all the flowers gone by American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger. Kiefer commented that “The most important sentence in this song is ‘When will we ever learn.’ The rest of the song is a little bit kitschy, but this is a deeper thing. We don’t know why things repeat all the time. We have a situation now like in 1933 in Germany, it’s horrible.” The two exhibitions feature twenty-five works by Kiefer, including a major new painting installation at the Stedelijk Museum that combines oxidized copper, paint, clay, army uniforms, dried rose petals and gold, symbolising the cycle of life, death, the human condition and the nature of war.
Kiefer’s affinity with Vincent van Gogh dates back to 1963 when Kiefer won a travel scholarship and chose to follow the route taken by Van Gogh, from his birthplace in the Netherlands, through Belgium and then on to southern France. Kiefer stayed for a few months in Fourques, near Arles, where Van Gogh painted much of his best-known works, such as the Sunflowers series. Regarding Van Gogh, Kiefer said provocatively, “He worked very hard, because he had no talent, you know. The last two years he did all for what he’s now famous. That’s because he didn’t stop. He kept painting and painting.” The exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum presents seven key works by Van Gogh, such as his Wheatfield With Crows (1890), with previously unseen paintings and thirteen early drawings by Kiefer inspired by the themes of Van Gogh’s art, such as natural phenomenon, landscape, seasons, memory and light.
The exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum focuses on Kiefer’s close ties to the Netherlands, specifically the artist’s connection with the museum, which early in Kiefer’s career acquired Märkischer Sand (1982) and Innenraum (1981), a painting which features a view of the skylit chamber of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin where Adolf Hitler once met with members of his military to map out his destruction and seizure of Europe. The reference to World War II was a challenging—even taboo—subject in post-war Germany at the time it was created, and follows on from earlier work by Kiefer such as the Occupations performance piece created when he was a 24-year-old art student and traveled across Europe posing at significant historic sites performing the Nazi salute.
Given that the exhibitions coincide with Kiefer’s 80th birthday, as well as the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, the subject of his earlier artwork confronting Germany’s Nazi past and the themes of history, memory, silence, time, metaphysics and humanity is a palpable reminder of the need not to forget the trauma and horror of war. While Kiefer said that the new work for this major show isn’t meant to depict politics or any specific world event, he does keep informed about current geopolitics and the escalation for war in Europe. Kiefer references this as he spoke about the process inherent in his art, “When I paint, I don’t paint with my head, it’s with my body,” and that given his knowledge of war, “It’s logical that it comes through. It’s me, my body, that brings it onto the canvas. It’s not intended to warn people, but I do hope it’s a warning.”