In Asche für Paul Celan, Anselm Kiefer creates a dialogue with the work of Paul Celan, the Holocaust survivor and great German-language poet, who has influenced the artist’s output since adolescence. Celan experienced the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, having been forced to work at one and having lost his parents at another. In response, Celan chose poetry for his account of the barbarism of the Nazi regime. In the words of Anselm Kiefer, “Celan does not merely contemplate nothingness; he has experienced it, lived through it.”

On loan from the TIA Collection in Santa Fe, NM, Kiefer’s subtext imbued sculpture features a 13-foot representation of a German U-boat constructed of lead as its central element. The large boat is pinned motionless to the floor by a stack of immense books, also of lead, surrounded by concrete rubble. 

ANSELM KIEFER, Asche für Paul Celan, 2006, mixed media, 157.5 x 98.5 in. Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM.