Untitled (Siegfried Forgets Brunhilde)

Anselm Kiefer is a painter, whose canvases are known for their complex layering of materials and of meaning, often featuring themes from mythology and German history. He first introduced photography into his work beginning in the late 1960s, producing images that are manipulated, painted, and written on. The title of this example refers to a scene from Wagner's epic opera The Ring of the Nibelung. Like many of Kiefer's works from the 1970s, it depicts a dark and mysterious landscape-in this case, a model staged in the studio out of sand, straw, and broken glass, along with a bottle and mushrooms meant to suggest the magic potion taken by the hero Siegfried, causing him to forget his love for Brünhilde.