Anselm Kiefer's paintings hung beside Van Gogh's in three rooms at the Royal Academy, the first exhibition to trace the older painter's hold on him.
The Royal Academy of Arts hung Anselm Kiefer beside Vincent van Gogh in three rooms in Mayfair, from Saturday 28 June to Sunday 26 October 2025. It was the first exhibition to consider Van Gogh’s lasting influence on Kiefer.
Kiefer grew up in a German town the Second World War had devastated. A few months after turning eighteen, he received a travel grant and retraced Van Gogh’s life from the Netherlands through Belgium and Paris to Arles.
He cared less for the unhappy biography than for the rational structure and confident construction of the paintings. Across a career of nearly 60 years, he has painted the land as a silent witness to human history.
Both men read widely. Most of Van Gogh’s 800 surviving letters refer to literature, and mythology and poetry have shaped Kiefer’s paintings and sculptures.
Van Gogh’s Shoes, L’Arlésienne and Snow-Covered Field with a Harrow hung in the Burlington Gardens galleries. Beside them were Kiefer’s Nevermore, Under the Lime Tree on the Heather and The Crows, with new pieces of his not shown before. The Academy developed the exhibition with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.