About the artist
Anselm Kiefer was born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, Germany. In 1992, he moved to France, where he lives and works between Paris and Barjac near Avignon. He studied law, literature and linguistics before attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. As a young artist, Anselm Kiefer encountered Joseph Beuys and participated in his performance Save the Woods (1971). In 1980, Anselm Kiefer was selected for the West German Pavilion at the 39th Venice Biennale and his works have since been shown in prominent solo exhibitions internationally, including at the Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (1984); Art Institute of Chicago (1987); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1991); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1998); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2001); Guggenheim Bilbao (2007); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2014); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Bibliothèque Nationale de France (2015); Albertina, Vienna (2016); State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (2017); Rodin Museum, Paris (2017); Met Breuer, New York (2018) and Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2019).

Anselm Kiefer was presented the Praemium Imperiale Award by Japan in 1999, and in 2008 he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In 2007 he showed at Monumenta in the Grand Palais in Paris and was the first artist since Georges Braque to have a permanent installation commissioned for the Louvre. In 2018 his site-specific sculpture Uraeus was exhibited in front of the Rockefeller Center, New York. French President Emmanuel Macron commissioned Anselm Kiefer to create a permanent installation for the Panthéon in Paris in 2020. An exhibition of monumental works by Anselm Kiefer dedicated to Paul Celan is on view at the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris until 11 January 2022.