{
"data": {
"id": 155637,
"accession_number": "1990.8",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Lot's Wife, 1989. Anselm Kiefer (German, 1945-). Oil paint, ash, stucco, chalk, linseed oil, polymer emulsion, salt, and applied elements (copper heating coil), on canvas, attached to lead foil, on plywood panels; framed: 350 x 410 cm (137 13/16 x 161 7/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 1990.8. \u00a9 Anselm Kiefer",
"current_location": "229B Contemporary",
"title": "Lot's Wife",
"creation_date": "1989",
"creation_date_earliest": 1989,
"creation_date_latest": 1989,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"Germany, 20th century"
],
"technique": "oil paint, ash, stucco, chalk, linseed oil, polymer emulsion, salt, and applied elements (copper heating coil), on canvas, attached to lead foil, on plywood panels",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Contemporary Art",
"collection": "CONTEMP - Painting",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 350 x 410 cm (137 13/16 x 161 7/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 3.5,
"height_inch": 137,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 4.1,
"width_inch": 161,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.4375
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 Anselm Kiefer",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Titled in chalk on recto of lower panel: Lots Frau",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311440,
"title": "Notable Acquisitions",
"description": "Notable Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 15, 1991).",
"opening_date": "1991-06-07T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 393229,
"title": "Contemporary Installation",
"description": "Contemporary Installation. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer).",
"opening_date": "2021-04-12T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, purchased from the artist",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1990 -",
"sortorder": 1
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "The subject of railroad tracks was inspired by the artist\u2019s photograph of the Bordeaux rail facility.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Born in the final year of World War II, Anselm Kiefer addresses the history and legacy of the Third Reich in his native Germany. \"We see railway tracks anywhere and think about Auschwitz,\" the artist said soon after painting Lot's Wife. \"It will remain that way in the long run.\" The drama of the railway tracks dissecting a barren landscape is heightened by the work's surface, dense with gesture and a range of materials, including salt. Referring to the fate of Lot's wife in the Book of Genesis\u2014who was turned to a pillar of salt when she looked back at the destruction of Sodom\u2014Kiefer frames a historical narrative within a biblical one.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60476539"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Hinson, Tom E. \"Notable Acquisitions.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 3 (1991): 63-147.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 109",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161319"
},
{
"citation": "Hinson, Tom E. \"Anselm Kiefer: \"Lot's Wife\".\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 4 (1993): 180-85.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 180, 183; Mentioned: p. 180-85",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161410"
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, \u201cThe Cleveland Museum of Art Acquires Major Works,\u201d December 20, 1995, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
"page_number": null,
"url": "https://archive.org/details/cmapr4002"
},
{
"citation": "Arasse, Daniel. Anselm Kiefer. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 84",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 121",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Moore, John L., Esther Jun, Clodagh Keogh, William H. Robinson, Danni Shen, Enid Shomer, and Reto Thu\u0308ring. Demise: Rina Banerjee, Esperanza Corte\u0301s, Jae Rhim Lee, Brian Maguire, Paolo Pelosini, Levent Tuncer. 2018, 8.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 5; reproduced: p. 8.",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Gallagher, Lowell. Sodomscapes: Hospitality in the Flesh. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017.",
"page_number": "1, 2",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1990.8",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "Paula and Eugene Stevens Gallery",
"athena_id": 155637,
"creators": [
{
"id": 533,
"description": "Anselm Kiefer (German, 1945-)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Anselm Kiefer German, 1945-\r\n\r\nOne of the most significant and reclusive artists of the past 20 years, Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Bavaria, two months before the end of World War II. His enormous mixed-media canvases, as well as his smaller bookworks, are laden with cultural, political, mythic, and religious symbolism. These works are made in direct response to his Teutonic heritage and, in particular, Germany's war experience. Kiefer addresses questions regarding German identity in the postwar world, a highly sensitive subject that has brought him both critical acclaim and adamant opposition.\r\n\tKiefer studied law and French at the University of Freiburg in 1965 before turning to painting. He graduated in 1970 and began informal study at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in D\u00fcsseldorf with Joseph Beuys, who encouraged him to paint despite dominance of conceptual art at the time and the declaration that painting was dead. Kiefer often spends years on a piece, working intermittently, and retains rigid control of the placement of his paintings after they leave his studio.\r\n\tAlthough Kiefer's work has changed little throughout his career, his earlier imagery relied on figurative elements and his later paintings have become more abstract, often incorporating architectural elements. He frequently begins with an enlarged photographic image, which he distorts by such techniques as scorching, staining, and burning. His materials include molten lead, tar, straw, and clay, metaphorical substances associated with the German land and its mythologies. The transformative process also recalls alchemy, a subject that interested Beuys, who believed art had the power to evoke a change of state from physical to spiritual.\r\n\tKiefer has had numerous international exhibitions and published monographs, and is represented in major American and European collections. In addition to one-person exhibitions in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Israel, and England, the Philadelphia Museum of Art organized a retrospective of his work that toured the United States in 1987-88. In recent years, Kiefer has begun to make films that, rooted in the medium of photography, extend the physical and narrative qualities characteristic of all his work into the realms of motion and time. He lives in Barjac, France. A.W.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1945",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1990-01-29T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1989,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1989",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "cover",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-08-03 14:22:21.146000"
}
}