ANSELM KIEFER (B. 1945)

Consumed by a fiery blaze of light, Ave Maria is a visionary large-scale work from Anselm Kiefer’s cycle of paintings devoted to the Virgin Mary. Stretching nearly two metres in height, its visceral, tactile surface looms before the viewer like an ancient fragment of earth, bedecked with roses and inscribed with the titular salutation. Created between 2007 and 2008, this series of works extended Kiefer’s long artistic engagement with Christian iconography, marking a return to his own religious heritage. Raised as a Catholic, the artist served as an altar boy in church – he claims to still be able to recite the Latin mass – and was enthralled by religion’s transcendental promises. Though he gradually renounced its practices over the years, he maintained a deeply spiritual outlook in his work, weaving together a variety of sacred texts with narratives drawn from mythology, literature, history and philosophy. In the present series of paintings, Kiefer explores his fascination with the Marian dogmas through a number of biblical invocations. Specifically, Ave Maria may be said to conjure the ‘burning bush’ that appeared to Moses in the Book of Exodus. In Orthodox tradition, this phenomenon is said to foretell the immaculate conception: just as the bush remained unburnt by the flames, so too would Mary bear Christ while remaining a virgin. Arguably, the image also stands as a metaphor for Kiefer’s own art, which seeks to extract metaphysical wonderment from raw, elemental materials. In Ave Maria, the result is a powerful hymn to creativity and fertility: an epiphanic vision made incarnate.