Anselm Kiefer Quotes

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

- Anselm Kiefer

Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.

- Anselm Kiefer

I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing.

- Anselm Kiefer

I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.

- Anselm Kiefer

History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.

- Anselm Kiefer

The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.

- Anselm Kiefer

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

- Anselm Kiefer

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

- Anselm Kiefer

If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.

- Anselm Kiefer

I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all.

- Anselm Kiefer

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.

- Anselm Kiefer

When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.

- Anselm Kiefer

Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.

- Anselm Kiefer

I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.

- Anselm Kiefer

I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.

- Anselm Kiefer

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

- Anselm Kiefer

Buying art is not understanding art.

- Anselm Kiefer

Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.

- Anselm Kiefer

But we should also not forget the difference between what first motivated me and the work that is the result.

- Anselm Kiefer

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

- Anselm Kiefer

History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.

- Anselm Kiefer