Böhmen liegt am Meer (Bohemia Lies by the Sea)

Anselm Kiefer

1996 · Oil, emulsion, shellac, charcoal, and powdered paint on burlap · Modern and Contemporary Art

Kiefer’s nearly fifty-year exploration of the complications of history has taken both monumental and intimate forms. For this work, he chose an immense double canvas on which to present an isolated country road seen through a field covered with poppies. Associated with sleep and also emblematic of military veterans, the poppies are described with paint the color of dried blood. The title, inscribed along the narrow horizon and again on the path, comes from a poem by Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) about longing for utopia while recognizing that it can never be found, just as Bohemia—the landlocked region in Central Europe annexed by Nazi Germany as the Sudetenland—can never lie by the sea.

Artist

Anselm Kiefer

Date

1996

Medium

Oil, emulsion, shellac, charcoal, and powdered paint on burlap

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift and Joseph H. Hazen Foundation Purchase Fund, 1997