Anselm Kiefer
Sag mir wo die Blumen sind
Exhibition — Mar 7 until Jun 9, 2025
For the first time in their history, two of the largest museums in the Netherlands, the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, are joining forces to stage a major exhibition of one of the most important artists of our time: Anselm Kiefer. As a visitor, you can visit two museums with one ticket.
Grand, gripping, and relevant: Kiefer makes it clear how precious human imagination still is – and how essential it is to cherish it.
Kiefer + collection Van Gogh Museum &
Stedelijk Museum
Kiefer + all access Stedelijk Museum
The exhibition at the Stedelijk can only be viewed in conjunction with Anselm Kiefer's exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum. Please be aware that Museumkaart holders also need a time slot and pay a surcharge.
Two museums, one exhibition
This diptych exhibition places Kiefer centre stage, uniquely highlighting the artist’s special connection with the work of Vincent van Gogh and showing all of Kiefer’s best-loved works from the Stedelijk collection – a museum that has been pivotal to his career – together for the first time. Both venues will also present new, previously unexhibited work by the artist, including the immense and breathtaking title work of the exhibition: Sag mir wo die Blumen sind.
Kiefer at the Van Gogh
The presentation at the Van Gogh Museum will demonstrate the enduring influence of Vincent van Gogh on Kiefer’s work. At the age of seventeen, Kiefer won a travel scholarship and chose to follow the route taken by Van Gogh from the Netherlands to Belgium and France. Van Gogh and his work have remained a vital source of inspiration for him. The exhibition presents previously unseen paintings by Kiefer in combination with several key works by Van Gogh.
Kiefer at the Stedelijk
The presentation at the Stedelijk focuses on Kiefer’s close ties to the Netherlands, particularly the artist’s connection with the museum. The Stedelijk acquired Innenraum (1981) and Märkischer Sand (1982) early in the artist’s career and staged an acclaimed solo exhibition of his work in 1986. This exhibition is not only an unprecedented opportunity to see all the works in the Stedelijk’s collection together, but also a chance to see Kiefer’s more recent, never shown paintings. Anselm Kiefer also created two new installations at the Stedelijk: the large-scale title work Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, that covers the entire circuit of the historic staircase, and Steigend, steigend, sinke nieder, in which photographs from the artists’ archive dangle from the ceiling, like lead reels of film.
About Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945, Donaueschingen, Germany) was born in the closing months of World War II, and as a boy he played in the debris of post-war Germany. In the late 1960s, Kiefer was one of the first German artists to address the country’s fraught history in monumental, acerbic works for which he sustained intense criticism in his homeland. In the Netherlands, his work first gained recognition among collectors and museums like the Stedelijk. Later, Kiefer would be hailed for breaking the silence surrounding Germany’s past. His work reflects on themes such as history, mythology, philosophy, literature, alchemy, and landscape.
Sag mir wo die Blumen sind
The title of the exhibition is taken from the 1955 protest song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” by American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, which became famous when Marlene Dietrich performed it in 1962. Kiefer’s expansive new installation for the Stedelijk Museum Sag mir wo die Blumen sind combines paint, clay, uniforms, dried rose petals, and gold, symbolising the cycle of life and death with the human condition and fate of mankind playing a central motif. The flowers of the title are also a reference to the Sunflowers (1889) by Vincent van Gogh and to recent landscapes by Kiefer, which will be seen for the first time in the exhibition.
Credits
1. Anselm Kiefer, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, 2024, detail. Emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, sediment of electrolysis, clay, dried flowers, straw, fabric, steel, charcoal and collage of canvas on canvas. Copyright: Anselm Kiefer. Photo credit: Nina Slavcheva
2. Anselm Kiefer, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. In Anselm Kiefer - Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam & Van Gogh Museum, 2025. Photo: Peter Tijhuis
3. Anselm Kiefer, The starry night, 2019. © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet
4. Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, 1890, oil on canvas, 50.5 × 103 cm, collection Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
5. Anselm Kiefer, Untitled, 1989 & Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1990. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In Anselm Kiefer - Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam & Van Gogh Museum, 2025. Photo: Michael Floor
6. Anselm Kiefer, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, 2024, installation view in studio, Croissy, France. Emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, sediment of electrolysis, clay, dried flowers, straw, fabric, steel, charcoal and collage of canvas on canvas.
7. Anselm Kiefer, Innenraum, 1981. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In Anselm Kiefer - Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam & Van Gogh Museum, 2025. Photo: Michael Floor
8. Anselm Kiefer, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. In Anselm Kiefer - Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam & Van Gogh Museum, 2025. Photo: Peter Tijhuis
9. Anselm Kiefer, Beilzeit - Wolfzeit, 2019. Courtesy of the artist & Gagosian Gallery. In Anselm Kiefer - Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam & Van Gogh Museum, 2025. Photo: Michael Floor
10. Anselm Kiefer, Märkischer Sand, 1982. Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In Anselm Kiefer - Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam & Van Gogh Museum, 2025. Photo: Michael Floor
11. Anselm Kiefer, Steigend, steigend, sinke nieder, 2024. Courtesy of the artist & White Cube. In Anselm Kiefer - Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam & Van Gogh Museum, 2025. Photo: Michael Floor
The exhibition Anselm Kiefer – Sag mir wo die Blumen sind is organized by the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in close collaboration with the artist. The exhibition is curated by Emilie Gordenker and Edwin Becker (Van Gogh Museum) and Leontine Coelewij (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam).
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Van Gogh Museum thank their main partner Vriendenloterij and joint partners:
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam thanks the benefactors of the Stedelijk Museum Fonds and its main partner Gemeente Amsterdam.
