On Every Mountain Peak There Is Peace

Anselm Kiefer

1971 · Watercolor and gouache on paper · Modern and Contemporary Art

Kiefer based this watercolor on photographs he had taken near the barren but beautiful coast of what was then Yugoslavia and titled it after a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Goethe's "Wanderers Nachtlied" (Wanderer's Nightsong), well known in Germany, begins, "On every mountain peak / there is peace." The artist said he was attracted to the poem because "it makes a connection between human beings and landscape and means something more important, that you . . . will enter into the same cycle of life and death as nature."

Artist

Anselm Kiefer

Date

1971

Medium

Watercolor and gouache on paper

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1995