Exhibition highlights how Anselm Kiefer was inspired by Vincent van Gogh

When he was just 17 years old, German artist Anselm Kiefer retraced the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh from the Netherlands through Belgium and into France. Now, more than half a century later, the museum named for the Dutch master is joining forces for the first time with the neighbouring Stedelijk modern and contemporary art museum in Amsterdam to stage a blockbuster exhibition of Kiefer’s work, titled “Sag mir wo die Blumen sind,” a reference to folk singer Pete Seeger's iconic pacifist anthem “Where have all the flowers gone?”

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Kiefer said he did not set out to make an exclusively anti-war exhibition, even though he closely follows world events including the conflict triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I don’t say ‘I do now an exhibition against the war. This I don’t do because this is a program; I'm not a programmatic artist,” he said. “I do what is in me, what has to come out. And that is about all kinds of things, about the dead, about the war.”

Kiefer's sometimes bleak work, rooted in growing up in post-World War II Germany, might not immediately feel closely related to Van Gogh's vibrant and richly colored landscapes and vases of sunflowers.