id: 155637 accession number: 1990.8 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1990.8 updated: 2020-07-06 09:00:48.270000 Lot's Wife, 1989. Anselm Kiefer (German, 1945-). Oil paint, ash, stucco, chalk, linseed oil, polymer emulsion, salt and applied elements (e.g., 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 © Anselm Kiefer title: Lot's Wife title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1989 creation date earliest: 1989 creation date latest: 1989 current location: 229C Contemporary creditline: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund copyright: © Anselm Kiefer --- culture: Germany, 20th century technique: oil paint, ash, stucco, chalk, linseed oil, polymer emulsion, salt and applied elements (e.g., copper heating coil), on canvas, attached to lead foil, on plywood panels department: Contemporary Art collection: CONTEMP - Painting type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Anselm Kiefer (German, 1945-) - artist Anselm Kiefer German, 1945- One 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. Kiefer 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 Düsseldorf 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. Although 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. Kiefer 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. --- measurements: Framed: 350 x 410 cm (137 13/16 x 161 7/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Titled in chalk on recto of lower panel: Lots Frau translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Notable Acquisitions opening date: 1991-06-07T04:00:00 Notable Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 15, 1991). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, purchased from the artist date: 1990 - footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: The subject of railroad tracks was inspired by the artist’s photograph of the Bordeaux rail facility. digital description: wall description: As a German artist, Kiefer struggles with the aftermath of the Holocaust and creates work that engages history, ethical issues of the present, and German identity through images emblematic of Nazi sites. This barren, deeply recessed landscape is divided by train tracks, recalling the deportation and death issued by the Nazi party. A substructure of lead mounted on wood is marked by footprints and tire tracks, plastered, burned, and covered with ash. The raw natural materials and destructive artistic process symbolize human tragedy. Salt, applied to the upper half of the work, connects the historical event with the biblical narrative of Lot’s escape from Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot’s wife, who disobeyed warnings not to look back at God’s destruction of the cities, was turned into a pillar of salt. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS 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 Cleveland Museum of Art, “The Cleveland Museum of Art Acquires Major Works,” December 20, 1995, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. page number: url: https://archive.org/details/cmapr4002 Gallagher, Lowell. Sodomscapes: Hospitality in the Flesh. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017. page number: 1, 2 url: --- IMAGES