Anselm Kiefer: For Jean-Noël Vuarnet

Depicting figures drawn from literary, biblical, mythical and artistic sources, alongside images of flowers and landscapes, this exhibition offers a rare insight into Kiefer’s more intimate watercolours, created over the past decade in the artist’s studio in France.

‘Watercolour is often ranked as the underdog within the artistic media hierarchy, with oil firmly at the top. It suffers the connotations of the amateur artist, which belies its real magic as a rich, ancient, complex and unpredictable medium. The 18th century was its heyday, predicated on the invention of the portable paint box. Chaperoned leisured ladies could paint in delicate swathes of colour in the manner of plein-air artists such as Turner, Cotman, Towne and Constable. According to Kiefer, ‘with watercolour you cannot work by levels, you do one level and that’s it. You do more and it becomes a failure’[i].’

Text by Liz Rideal