Rivers—both near and far—form central theme of Kiefer exhibition

Water is the anchor of Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea.

The German artist was born in 1945 near the source of the Danube River in Donaueschingen, Germany; he grew up in the town of Rastatt near the Rhine River, where it forms the border with France. The river shaped his imagination as a child: He played in abandoned wartime bunkers along its banks, and when floodwaters reached his family’s basement, he wondered whether the border had moved—and whether he now stood in another country.

“For Kiefer, rivers and seas aren’t just landscapes—they’re metaphors for memory, transformation, and the passage of time,” said exhibition curator Min Jung Kim, the Museum’s Barbara B. Taylor Director. “Water becomes a way to reflect on history, identity, and the cycles that shape both the individual and the collective.”

In SLAM’s exhibition, on view through January 25, the river is one of the most persistent themes. The Rhine, especially, recurs so frequently, Kim said, that it feels like a character in his work. One piece in the exhibition, aptly named Der Rhein (The Rhine), captures Kiefer’s idyllic childhood fantasy: looking across the river into France, imagining it to be a utopia. Another work, a woodcut titled Die Reintöchter (The Rhinemaidens), showcases characters from Richard Wagner’s 1876 opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), floating in the waters of the Rhine. The nymphs guard the Rhinegold, which is stolen and forged into a ring. The cycle closes with the ring’s return to the Rhine, an act that restores the balance of nature.

Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea culminates in the Museum’s Sculpture Hall with massive, site-specific green and gold-leaf works showcasing the Rhine, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers.

In 1991, Kiefer was in St. Louis to oversee the installation of Breaking of the Vessels at the Museum. During the visit, he traveled up the Mississippi River in a small boat to a newly constructed lock-and-dam complex just north of the city. The violent waves and hulking dam in the Sculpture Hall work Missouri, Mississippi recall that event. Above the dam, a woman with outstretched arms and legs floats over a tributary map of the Mississippi River system. As a water nymph, she personifies the river and its many branches. In Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki, three female figures representing spirit beings from Anishinaabe and Wabanaki Native peoples protect the river below.

Two other Sculpture Hall works—Am Rhein (On the Rhine) and Anselm fuit hic (Anselm Was Here)—return to the river of Kiefer’s youth with a tree-lined, blue-green ribbon flowing through the countryside beneath a golden sky. These four canvases, made with sediment of electrolysis, each stand nearly 31 feet tall and are installed in each corner alcove of Sculpture Hall.

The fifth Sculpture Hall work, Für Gregory Corso (For Gregory Corso), which is 27 feet tall and is installed in front of Shoenberg Gallery 236, is dedicated to the Beat poet Gregory Corso, from whom the exhibition got its title. In a 1981 poem, Corso contemplates the idea of an eternal spirit that survives death, comparing it to a river “unafraid / of becoming / the sea.”

Combined, the works on view reveal water’s enduring significance across human history—from its role as a source of life and spiritual purification to its association with memory, transformation, and the divine. For Kiefer, water becomes a vessel for cultural meaning and historical reflection.