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Lot Essay
‘Celan does not merely contemplate nothingness; he has experienced it, lived through it’ (Anselm Kiefer)
Originally part of the Hans Grothe Collection, renowned for its focus on post-war German art, Geheimnis der Farne (Secret of the Ferns) (2005-2007) captures Anselm Kiefer’s engagement with the transcendent power of history, legend, literature, and alchemy. Towering almost three metres in height, it is as much a sculpture as a painting. The canvas shimmers with the vertical trunks of pine trees, placing us within the Wald of German folklore. Kiefer has encrusted the surface with silver-grey layers of paint, plaster, chalk and ash. There are moss-like bursts of unearthly, powdery cobalt blue. Over this background grow the rusty fronds of a fern plant, and gnarled branches that tangle like barbed wire. From the centre of the work emerges a ghostly, bunker-like form, like that of Kiefer’s celebrated concrete sculptures. An artist’s frame contains the scene like a vitrine. Geheimnis der Farne is part of a major series of works that take the fern as their central leitmotif; an installation of the same name was unveiled at Kiefer’s landmark Monumenta exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris in 2007.
Geheimnis der Farne is named after a poem by the Romanian-born Jewish poet Paul Celan, who has remained an inspiration and muse since Kiefer first encountered his poetry in 1981. Dominique Baqué writes: ‘For Celan, Secret of the Ferns refers to a legend about the fern: on the eve of St John’s Day, 24 June, in midsummer, anyone who collects the tiny spores of the fern is said to become invisible’ (D. Baqué, ‘Cycles and Spirals, Layers and Palimpsests’, in D. Baqué, Anselm Kiefer: A Monograph, London 2025, p. 262). Bunkers do the same for people in wartime. In Kiefer’s work, the gentle vitality of the fern contrasts with the mute mass of the bunker. The flora’s presence evokes herbariums, collections of dried, pressed plants that hark back to a past age of botany. Kiefer’s scene seems instead to gesture towards an uncertain future. Are these ferns the last life left on Earth?
Kiefer shares Celan’s interest in alchemy, the proto-scientific discipline that sought to transmute matter. Ferns themselves, as a source of coal and oil, are themselves subject to a millennia-old alchemical transformation. The techniques by which Kiefer creates his work can be compared to this process: materials like ash and soil are marshalled and morphed to conjure scenes of portentous beauty and renewal. In 1987 Mark Rosenthal wrote that ‘Kiefer is … becoming an alchemist, who attempts to work the materials of the earth into new formations’ (M. Rosenthal, ‘Visions of a New World’, in M. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, exh. cat. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 1987, p. 142). Geheimnis der Farne is both a visionary investigation of alchemical forces and, at the same time, a work of near-supernatural alchemy.
Originally part of the Hans Grothe Collection, renowned for its focus on post-war German art, Geheimnis der Farne (Secret of the Ferns) (2005-2007) captures Anselm Kiefer’s engagement with the transcendent power of history, legend, literature, and alchemy. Towering almost three metres in height, it is as much a sculpture as a painting. The canvas shimmers with the vertical trunks of pine trees, placing us within the Wald of German folklore. Kiefer has encrusted the surface with silver-grey layers of paint, plaster, chalk and ash. There are moss-like bursts of unearthly, powdery cobalt blue. Over this background grow the rusty fronds of a fern plant, and gnarled branches that tangle like barbed wire. From the centre of the work emerges a ghostly, bunker-like form, like that of Kiefer’s celebrated concrete sculptures. An artist’s frame contains the scene like a vitrine. Geheimnis der Farne is part of a major series of works that take the fern as their central leitmotif; an installation of the same name was unveiled at Kiefer’s landmark Monumenta exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris in 2007.
Geheimnis der Farne is named after a poem by the Romanian-born Jewish poet Paul Celan, who has remained an inspiration and muse since Kiefer first encountered his poetry in 1981. Dominique Baqué writes: ‘For Celan, Secret of the Ferns refers to a legend about the fern: on the eve of St John’s Day, 24 June, in midsummer, anyone who collects the tiny spores of the fern is said to become invisible’ (D. Baqué, ‘Cycles and Spirals, Layers and Palimpsests’, in D. Baqué, Anselm Kiefer: A Monograph, London 2025, p. 262). Bunkers do the same for people in wartime. In Kiefer’s work, the gentle vitality of the fern contrasts with the mute mass of the bunker. The flora’s presence evokes herbariums, collections of dried, pressed plants that hark back to a past age of botany. Kiefer’s scene seems instead to gesture towards an uncertain future. Are these ferns the last life left on Earth?
Kiefer shares Celan’s interest in alchemy, the proto-scientific discipline that sought to transmute matter. Ferns themselves, as a source of coal and oil, are themselves subject to a millennia-old alchemical transformation. The techniques by which Kiefer creates his work can be compared to this process: materials like ash and soil are marshalled and morphed to conjure scenes of portentous beauty and renewal. In 1987 Mark Rosenthal wrote that ‘Kiefer is … becoming an alchemist, who attempts to work the materials of the earth into new formations’ (M. Rosenthal, ‘Visions of a New World’, in M. Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, exh. cat. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 1987, p. 142). Geheimnis der Farne is both a visionary investigation of alchemical forces and, at the same time, a work of near-supernatural alchemy.