Anselm Kiefer

“I see my work as a continuous cycle of construction and destruction.”

“Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas.”

“The artist has to be a reactor, a seismograph of his time.”

“You cannot be an artist if you are not a reactionary.”

“History is a material for me, as clay is for a sculptor.”

“I believe that the language of icons and symbols is still relevant.”

“What is past is not dead; it is not even past. We separate ourselves from the past at our peril.”

“I am interested in the functioning of the human brain, in the storage of memory, not in a scientific way but in a poetic one.”

“Art is difficult. It’s not entertainment.”

“A book is more than a carrier of information. It is a space for memory.”

“The canvas is the memory of the painter.”

“I don't invent anything. I just rediscover.”

“Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.”

“I need resistance in my life. If I have a page of white paper, I can't do anything.”

“My art is an attempt to leave a trace, a scar.”