Fifteen years after inaugurating the Monumenta series at the Grand Palais in 2007, Anselm Kiefer is the first plastic artist to take over the entire space of the Grand Palais Éphémère, at the invitation of the Rmn - Grand Palais for a unique project.

Anselm Kiefer For Paul Celan exhibition at the Grand Palais Éphémère

Anselm Kiefer, Für Paul Celan - das Geheimnis der Farne [For Paul Celan - Le Secret des fougères] (detail), 2021, 840 x 570 cm, emulsion, acrylic, oil, shellac, metal, resin and chalk on canvas - Copyright: © Anselm Kiefer / Photo: Georges Poncet

With Pour Paul Celan, Anselm Kiefer continues his work on European memory, in which France and Germany are the major players. In this exhibition sculptures, installations, and 19 large-format canvases interact with the uneasy poetry of the great German-speaking poet, Paul Celan. Paul Celan's work has been endlessly present in Anselm Kiefer's paintings, from the adolescence and the discovery of the poem "Todesfuge" ("Fugue de mort"), and continues until today with this new set of paintings. This dialogue has intensified in recent years and especially in 2020 thanks to the period of confinement isolation.In extracts from his diary written during the preparation of the exhibition at the Grand Palais Éphémère, Anselm Kiefer writes:

“Celan is not content to contemplate nothingness, he has experienced it, lived it, gone through it.

(...)

paul celan's language comes from so far away, from another world with which we have not yet been confronted, it reaches us like that of an extraterrestrial. we find it difficult to understand it. here and there we catch a fragment. we cling to it without ever being able to identify the whole. I humbly tried, for sixty years. from now on, I write this language on canvas, an enterprise to which we devote ourselves as to a rite.

(...)

the exhibition at the grand palace: how to put celan in a room built for the olympiads? is not this an impossible, blasphemous enterprise? your large paintings in which you quote celan: isn't it as if you were plastering celan on morris columns? shouldn't you set the paintings on fire, burn them in public? "

According to thinker and filmmaker Alexander Kluge, Anselm Kiefer's paintings bring Celan's verses to life, which they comment on, and in return the poet's verses bring the paintings to life. Here the artistic disciplines seize the conflicts of history, even if, always according to Alexander Kluge, “a Bauhaus for the prevention of the war,” that does not exist.

This exhibition takes place as France takes over the presidency of the European Union. It is a form of prologue, as if, in the words of Anselm Kiefer, “Madame de Staël was addressing Germany”. Pour Paul Celan's paintings are placed in a space devoid of classical scenography and picture rails, without chronology, like the untreated memories of our human existence.

The Grand Palais Éphémère, a 10m² monumental space designed by architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, is the living environment of this installation. The Military School as well as the modern UNESCO buildings in the South, will echo the leitmotifs that haunt the artist's work: the political history of Europe crossed by its conflicts.

An exhibition catalog accompanies the project, bringing together texts by the philosopher Emanuele Coccia, artist Edmund de Waal, filmmaker Alexander Kluge and curator Ulrich Wilmes as well as excerpts from Anselm Kiefer's diary.

Useful information

  • hours :
    • every day from 10 a.m. to 19 p.m.
    • night until 21 p.m. on Friday and Saturday (except December 24 and 25: closing at 19 p.m.)
  • prices:
    • € 13 / € 10 (TR)
    • free for less than 16 years
    • reduced rate: large family card, jobseeker
  • access:
    • Grand Palais Éphémère, Place Joffre, 75007 Paris
    • metro: “La Motte Piquet Grenelle” stop by lines 6, 8 and 10 “Ecole Militaire” stop by line 8
    • bus: “Ecole Militaire” stop by Buses 28, 80, 86, 92 “Général de Bollardière” stop by Buses 80 and 82

For more information and to book: https://www.grandpalais.fr

To read our last article on the Grand Palais:

History of the Grand Palais by Nayel Zeaiter, September 16, 2021