Beschreibung:

◆ 18 Masterworks from a Private Collection Anselm Kiefer Follow Die Meistersinger titled and inscribed '"Die Meistersinger auf der Festspielwiese Nürnberg"' upper centre oil, emulsion, sand and collage elements on canvas 280 x 380 cm (110 1/4 x 149 5/8 in.) Executed in 1981 - 1982.
Provenance Hakone Open Air Museum, Japan Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Zeitgeist (Internationale Kunstausstellung Berlin 1982), 15 October - 19 December 1982, no. 123, n.p. (illustrated) Dusseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle; ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Anselm Kiefer , 24 March - 30 September 1984, no. 42, p. 112 (illustrated, p. 113) The Art Institute of Chicago; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art; New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Anselm Kiefer , 5 December 1987 - 3 January 1989, pl. 49, p. 101 (illustrated) Tokyo, Sezon Museum of Art; Kyoto, The National Museum of Modern Art; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Anselm Kiefer - Melancholia , 3 June - 24 October 1993, pl. 15, p. 224 (illustrated, p. 145) Literature Andrea Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer Paul Celan, Myth, Mourning and Memory , London, 2007, p. 131 (illustrated) Video Coded History: Anselm Kiefer's Confrontational 'Die Meistersinger' "1982 was a year that saw Kiefer go deeper in exploring what it meant for an artist to look at their own culture and history." Chairman Cheyenne Westphal discusses how Kiefer's 'Die Meistersinger', referencing Richard Wagner's opera of the same name, sees the master abstractionist bring Germany's fraught history into sharp focus. Catalogue Essay Central to contemporary debate concerning the display and creation of art, Die Meistersinger exemplifies Anselm Kiefer’s intellectually mature and nuanced ability to encompass the complexities of cultural history, memory and myth. Broadening the action of painting and developing the traditional use of the canvas, Kiefer instils his cross-disciplinary practice with life, vigour, poetry, imagination and drama, as exemplified by the present work. In the 1980s the question of politics and art burgeoning in Germany began to disseminate through crucial international exhibitions including the seminal Zeitgeist exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin in 1982. Confirming his pivotal artistic role in the confrontation of cultural memory and Zeitgeist , the present work was included in this poignant exhibition. Later included in the artist’s influential US show in 1987 to 1989 which toured from The Art Institute of Chicago to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Kiefer’s textural picture plane is woven with a multitude of referential signifiers, thrusting the viewer into a stratosphere of associative cultural and personal histories. Innovatively and individually displaying the artist’s concern with both materials and ideology, Kiefer expertly engages the emotional and expressive task of negotiating with the past. A rare example from the artist’s Meistersinger ( Mastersingers) works, another canvas from the series is held in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Both monumental in scale and richly detailed, Kiefer’s monolithic work assumes the weight of history, suspending the viewer in a deeply contemplative arena. The title of the present work refers to Richard Wagner’s opera of 1868, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , a prominent composition from the German composer’s opus. Wagner’s operatic oeuvre was favoured by leaders of the National Socialist Party in Germany and lauded as a triumph of German culture. As Andrea Lauterwein asserts, ‘the worldwide hegemony of German music served as a model for aggressive territorial expansion, justified by the genius of the race’ (Andrea Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer Paul Celan, Myth, Mourning and Memory , London, 2007, p. 122). Played at political rallies and events, Benito Mussolini welcomed Adolf Hitler with a rendition of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Venice Biennale in 1934; the work was also played to rouse the spirits of war-wounded soldiers on leave after the fall of Stalingrad in 1942. Set in mid-16th century Nuremberg, the opera tells the story of the ‘Master Singers’, a collective of craf