In 1969, Anselm Kiefer staged and photographed himself giving the Nazi salute in public places across Switzerland, France, and Italy. He later titled the series “Occupations” (German: Besetzungen), using it to confront how Nazi symbols still haunted postwar German identity. The work set the tone for his 1970s–1990s projects: using art to force public memory rather than avoid it.
In 1975, a selection of the “Occupations” photographs was published in the Cologne art journal Interfunktionen as “Occupations 1969.” Publication moved the work from private action to public record, making Kiefer’s confrontation with recent history part of a broader art debate. It also helped establish him as a major figure in a new generation of German artists.
In 1976, Kiefer completed “Varus,” a large painting that ties German landscape to ancient history and national myth. It references the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 CE), where Roman forces were defeated—an event later used in German nationalist storytelling. By embedding these references in paint, Kiefer explored how history can be turned into identity and propaganda.
In 1980, Kiefer was selected (with Georg Baselitz) for Germany’s presentation at the Venice Biennale, curated by Klaus Gallwitz. Showing monumental paintings in the German Pavilion—an architecture associated with the Nazi era—intensified debates about whether confronting fascist imagery risked repeating it or was necessary to prevent forgetting. The Biennale helped move Kiefer’s postwar German themes onto a major international stage.
In 1981, Kiefer made “Margarethe,” incorporating straw and photographic elements into the painted surface. The title refers to Paul Celan’s poem “Death Fugue,” where “Margarete” and “Shulamith” represent entangled German and Jewish fates after the Holocaust. The materials matter: straw evokes hair and burning, turning the canvas into an object that suggests both memory and physical ruin.
In 1982, Kiefer produced a work titled “To the Unknown Painter” (German: Dem unbekannten Maler) as a drawing made from watercolor and pencil on multiple sheets. The title points to the uneasy place of art in German history, where culture can be used for humanistic ideals or manipulated by dictatorship. This work also bridges his earlier image-based confrontations and the monumental paintings that followed.
In 1983, Kiefer completed “Sulamith,” using layered media (including straw) on linen. Like “Margarethe,” it draws from Celan’s “Death Fugue,” but shifts emphasis toward mourning and the Holocaust’s victims rather than the “Aryan” ideal figure. Together, the paired works show how Kiefer used painting as a postwar German memory project—built from rough, unstable materials that resist decorative beauty.
In 1983, Kiefer executed the large painting “To the Unknown Painter” using oil and other materials (including straw) on canvas. The work is often discussed in relation to Nazi-era monumental architecture, using an empty, damaged grandeur to question the role of artists and cultural ambition under dictatorship. It marked a peak moment of his early-1980s strategy: using scale, architecture-like space, and heavy materials to stage history inside painting.
In 1984, Kiefer produced works under the title “Nigredo,” a term from alchemy meaning the “blackening” stage associated with decomposition. The idea gave him a framework for linking material decay to historical trauma and the possibility of transformation. This shift helped expand his themes beyond specific Nazi references toward broader cycles of destruction and rebuilding.
By 1987, Kiefer was making works titled “Women of the Revolution” (Die Frauen der Revolution), which broadened his focus from German national memory to wider European history. The series uses named historical figures as symbols, turning portrait-like “dedications” into questions about political ideals, violence, and how societies remember (or erase) people. This period shows Kiefer extending his postwar approach into a larger historical archive.
In 1992, Kiefer moved to Barjac in southern France and began transforming an industrial site into a vast working environment later known as La Ribaute. The relocation marked a practical and conceptual change: instead of only making transportable paintings and sculptures, he increasingly built spaces—sheds, tunnels, and large installations—that functioned like an expanded studio and artwork combined. This shift set the stage for his later, more architectural approach to contemporary art.
By 1993, Kiefer was actively moving into and establishing his new studio base in the south of France, with Barjac becoming central to his practice. Building a long-term site allowed him to scale up—physically and conceptually—while carrying forward the core postwar question that shaped his 1970s–1980s work: what German and European culture can mean after mass violence. This transition closes the 1970s–1990s arc by showing how his earlier painting-led memory projects grew into permanent environments.
Anselm Kiefer's Postwar German Projects (1970s–1990s)