![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Archive/Sao-Paulo/2015/Anselm-Kiefer/Anselm-Kiefer-Morgenthau-Plan-Saculum-Aureum-2014-high-res.jpg?w=960&h=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1707734104&s=c61f63b7827ee859d1a9e4806bf3fab6 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Archive/Sao-Paulo/2015/Anselm-Kiefer/Anselm-Kiefer-Morgenthau-Plan-Saculum-Aureum-2014-high-res.jpg?w=1280&h=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1707734104&s=5d5799b1c64a06180bb5948c0fd2f6cd 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Archive/Sao-Paulo/2015/Anselm-Kiefer/Anselm-Kiefer-Morgenthau-Plan-Saculum-Aureum-2014-high-res.jpg?w=1600&h=1200&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1707734104&s=edcad2c02211ad676a956dc87fe624d4 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Archive/Sao-Paulo/2015/Anselm-Kiefer/Anselm-Kiefer-Morgenthau-Plan-Saculum-Aureum-2014-high-res.jpg?w=2360&h=1770&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1707734104&s=3780f3d8c1cbc2992a847e70728904b8 2360w)
Anselm Kiefer, Paintings
Anselm Kiefer
Paintings
7 April – 20 June 2015
White Cube São Paulo presented an exhibition of recent work by Anselm Kiefer. The paintings in this exhibition explore themes of history, politics and landscape and, in particular, the vision of ‘The Morgenthau Plan’.
‘The Morgenthau Plan’, proposed in 1944 by United States Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., was conceived to transform post-war Germany into a pre-industrial, agricultural nation in order to limit its ability to wage war. A polarising political act that in the artist’s words ‘ignored the complexity of things’, it sought to divide Germany into two independent states, annexing or dismantling all German centres of industry. Although ‘The Morgenthau Plan’ was never realised in its original form, it represented an alternative rural future, whereby the country would potentially be occupied more by farmland and plant-life than industry.
In this exhibition, Kiefer returned to the depiction of rural landscape and to one of his key symbols, flowers blooming through destruction and devastation. In these canvases, which echo both German Romantic painting and the turbulent landscapes of Van Gogh, huge, dark expanses of plant life – wheat or flowers – dominate two-thirds of the painting’s composition. Fertile and abundant and painted en masse, the plants are beginning to topple and decay, pictured from a perspective deep within their midst.
The notion of transformation and the alchemical has always been central to the artist’s practice and here Kiefer combines thick impasto layers of acrylic paint with metal, salt and electrolysed sediment to create unfixed surfaces, which physically change during the course of the painting’s existence. In one picture entitled Morgenthau – Plan: Saeculum Aureum (2014), an explosion of trampled and decaying purple and green vegetation is set against a stretch of golden sky, created by covering the top section of canvas with gold leaf, while in others, green copper sulphate suggests areas of dense cloud or pockets of organic decay. Kiefer’s singular approach to materials, clearly visible in these works, enacts an artistic alchemy creating experimental, playful and dynamic surfaces that are constantly in flux.
‘The Morgenthau Plan’ works present a cyclical view of past and future, part of a reflective process that addresses the fundamental absurdity of politics and the inherent power of landscape, exploiting the acute contradiction between the beauty of a rural, pre-industrial landscape and the destruction of an economic future that it represents.
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=e02adaa85b902d7edf0b867c9e7bf92f 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=75dbc5711d6dfafae921e8ac7aba830a 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=d5053cdf8f2e0766db8823d08b967e14 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=bfd1aee5191629cd4b21618b170ec672 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=6dec1e61fb66c0c26aa9ec6145ff6d92 2360w)
Anselm Kiefer
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