Anselm Kiefer

On view to the public: May 27– October 1.2006

The Aldrich Contemporary is pleased to announce a major exhibition of recent works by renowned German painter Anselm Kiefer. The exhibition will have its U.S. premiere at The Aldrich’s annual gala on Saturday, May 20; Aldrich members and media only will be able to view the exhibition from May 21 to May 26, before the public opening on May 27, 2006.

Velimir Chlebnikov is one of the most significant projects that Kiefer has presented in the United States in the last two decades, and will be one of the major art attractions of the tri-state area this summer. The Museum is afforded this unique opportunity because of the recent purchase of the work by an Aldrich patron. After the exhibition is shown at The Aldrich, it will disappear from the public view and move into a private collection in Connecticut.

Born in Germany in 1945 and currently living in France, Anselm Kiefer is a major European painter whose remarkable body of work explores the deep, mythological currents that guide Western history.

Called “magnificent…powerful…energetic” by London’s Daily Telegraph, Velimir Chlebnikov features a series of thirty masterful paintings housed in a steel pavilion designed by Kiefer. The Aldrich will install the pavilion in the Museum’s new sculpture garden from May to October 2006. The paintings and their pavilion are Kiefer’s tribute to the visionary Russian thinker Velimir Chlebnikov (1885-1922), who lived a brief and tumultuous life as a leading figure in the Russian avant-garde through the period of World War I and the Russian revolution. Kiefer was influenced by Chlebnikov’s writings, particularly his esoteric theories about the forces that cause human conflict.