The Infinite and the Hidden Light: Symbolic Analysis of Anselm Kiefer’s Painting En Sof (2020-22)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/ba.46.2024.18100Keywords:
Anselm Kiefer, Contemporary painting, Colour, Jewish mysticism, TheosophyAbstract
This article analyzes a significant large-format pictorial work by the renowned German visual artist Anselm Kiefer (1945, Donaueschingen) entitled En Sof (2020-22), an important work in his long career. The purpose of the exhibition is to explore the symbolic meaning of this painting, which is full of explicit references to Jewish mysticism. En Sof summarizes the interest that the Jewish Kabbalah has aroused in his work since his first trip to Jerusalem in 1983-84. This significant picture is charged with theosophical and theurgical resonances manifest in the «light of the Infinite [God]» of Jewish mysticism, cosmological –through reference to the four «worlds» or levels within the sefirotic world–, as well as the spiritual ladder, physically placed in the painting, which represents the axis mundi, by means of which the mystic ascends, through prayer, to the divine realm.
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