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Athanor

Athanor

Artist: Anselm Kiefer (German, born 1945)
Date: 1983-1984
Dimensions:
88 1/2 x 149 5/8 in. (225 x 3.8 m)
Medium: oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, and straw on photograph mounted on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1994.22
Label Text:The Honor Courtyard of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, seat of the Nazi government, is the setting for this powerful image. The title, Athanor, is the name of the legendary self-feeding furnace said to have been used by medieval alchemists to transform base metals into gold. The alchemical process was sometimes used to describe the spiritual quest by which the soul is purified and becomes one with God.

The scrawled “athanor” over the doors at the center of the painting also alludes to the doors of the concentration camp ovens where millions of bodies, mostly of Jewish prisoners, were incinerated. The grid lines on the paving, which lead the eye to the rear of the courtyard, suggest the railroads that transported Holocaust victims to their deaths. As if utilizing the alchemical approach, Hitler and other Nazis pathologically believed that they were “purifying” society by such destruction.

With his art, Anselm Kiefer uses the alchemists’ “secret fire” to transform the terrible legacy of Nazi Germany into hope for the future of humanity. He becomes the alchemist himself, literally using fire (a blowtorch) to scorch parts of the painting, symbolically changing symbols of evil and tragedy into something new.

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