12 SEP until 15 NOV 2025
Opening – 11 SEP 2025, 6-10 pm

Bastian Gallery presents Anselm Kiefer’s solo exhibition »Wasserfarben« featuring 21 watercolours by the artist spanning several decades. Kiefer’s watercolours were first introduced to an international audience 27 years ago at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and have since been exhibited in Paris and most recently at the Nolde Museum in Seebüll.

These works open a visual world that traces the artist’s beginnings and his path toward the present long before his international acclaim was established. The depicted motifs engage with recent German history, songs, legends and myths, Romantic literature, and fundamental philosophical questions that Kiefer studied in Heidegger’s ›Being and Time‹ and Bloch’s ›The Principle of Hope‹.

European literature from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern era counts among the artist’s essential sources of inspiration. At the heart of all these dialogues lies the ongoing conversation Kiefer conducts with ancient and contemporary poetry. On the occasion of receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2008, Kiefer stated: “Poems are my world.” His conceptual landscapes confront us with the finiteness of human existence, the endangerment and destruction of the environment and destruction of the environment, human guilt, and the innocence of nature.

Anselm Kiefer lives and works in France, where his works are permanently installed in major public institutions such as the Louvre and the Panthéon. In Germany, his work has been shown in solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Kunsthalle Tübingen, the Mönchehaus Museum in Goslar, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

This year, major exhibitions of Kiefer’s work are presented in museums across Europe, Asia, and the United States including the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Royal Academy in London, Nijo Castle in Kyoto, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. »Wasserfarben« is the artist’s seventh solo exhibition at Bastian Gallery and the first in Berlin dedicated exclusively to his watercolours. A catalogue accompanying the exhibition features texts by Heiner Bastian, Christian Ring, and Peter-Klaus Schuster.