Anselm Kiefer, Die Ungeborenen (The Unborn), 2001. Oil, acrylic, and plaster on lead on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with the Katharine Ordway and Richard Brown Baker, B.A. 1935, Funds

Speranza

Anselm Kiefer, Die Ungeborenen (The Unborn), 2001. Oil, acrylic, and plaster on lead on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with the Katharine Ordway and Richard Brown Baker, B.A. 1935, Funds

Anselm Kiefer comes across clearly in the interviews by Michael Auping and Sean O’Hagan.

He is well treated in Auping’s essay in Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth.

As background for 20th-century artists’ approaches to subject matter, history, and abstraction, the excerpts from the anthologies by Robert L. Herbert (out of print) and by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (in print) are invaluable.
 

Auping, Michael, and Anselm Kiefer. Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth. Fort Worth, Tex.: Prestel Publishing, 2005. See, especially, the introduction by Michael Auping, 27–50; and the interview by Auping with Kiefer, 165–76.
O’Hagan, Sean. “Sean O’Hagan Meets German Artist Anselm Kiefer. The Guardian (April 26, 2008).
Gilmour, John C. Fire on the Earth: Anselm Kiefer and the Postmodern World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990: 3–15, 78–138.
The documentary film about Kiefer by Sophie Fiennes Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010, 105 mins.) is available on Netflix (DVD or streaming).
 

Herbert, Robert L. Modern Artists on Art: Ten Unabridged Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Dover Publications, 1964: “Gleizes and Metzinger on Cubism,” 1–18; “Kandinsky, ‘Reminiscences,’” 19–44; “Mondrian, ‘Plastic and Pure Plastic Art,’” 114–30.
Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood. Art in Theory 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1992: “Roger Fry (1866–1934), ‘An Essay in Aesthetics,’” 78–86; “Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) from ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art,’” 86–94; “Clive Bell (1881–1964), ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis,’” 113–16; “Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) et al., ‘Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto,’” 149–52; “Robert Delaunay (1885–1941), ‘On the Construction of Reality in Pure Painting,’” 152–54; “Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), ‘The Cubists,’” 178–79; “Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), ‘On the Subject in Modern Painting,’ 179–81; “Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’” 512–20; “Clement Greenberg (b. 1909) ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon,’” 554–60; “Mark Rothko (1903–1970), ‘The Romantics were Prompted … ,’” 563–64; “Clement Greenberg (b. 1909), ‘Modernist Painting,’” 754–760; and “Daniel Bell (b. 1919), from ‘Modernism and Capitalism,’” 993–98.