Vincent van Gogh has had an enduring influence on Anselm Kiefer Hon RA over the artist’s nearly 60-year career. In June 2025, the Royal Academy of Arts will present work by both artists, exhibited side by side for the first time in the UK. The exhibition will bring together paintings and drawings by Van Gogh from the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, with paintings, drawings and sculptures by Kiefer, including new work that has never been shown before. The presentation will reveal similarities of thought, process and subject matter shared by the two artists but also reflect noticeable differences, offering visitors a new insight into both artists’ work.
Van Gogh was Kiefer’s first artistic inspiration. Kiefer first encountered Van Gogh’s work at age 18 when he received a travel grant to follow in his footsteps, starting in the Netherlands, through to Belgium, Paris and Arles, in the south of France. During his travels, Kiefer produced drawings inspired by Van Gogh and was profoundly influenced by the rational structure and compositional clarity of Van Gogh’s landscapes. Throughout Kiefer’s career, the pioneer of Post-Impressionism has informed the subjects and techniques of Kiefer’s monumental paintings and sculptures which draw on history, mythology, literature, philosophy and science.
Highlights of the exhibition will include a selection of Kiefer’s celebrated large-scale landscapes, including Die Krähen (The Crows), 2019 (Courtesy of the Artist and White Cube) and Nevermore, 2014 (Courtesy Eschaton Foundation). These monumental works clearly encapsulate Kiefer’s admiration for compositional devices used by Van Gogh, through his adoption of high horizon lines, close-up imagery combined with deep perspectives and panoramic formats. They also reflect shared motifs of crows and wheatfields and a deep affinity towards painterly surface textures. Juxtaposed with seminal landscapes by Van Gogh, including Snow-Covered Field with a Harrow (after Millet), 1890 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)) and Field of Irises near Arles, 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)), the exhibition will allow visitors to consider Van Gogh’s enduring influence on Kiefer’s practice.
The exhibition will also feature drawings by both artists. The drawings Kiefer produced in his youth, inspired by Van Gogh during his journey in his footsteps, will be presented alongside several of Van
Gogh’s own drawings. La Crau Seen from Montmajour, 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)), last exhibited in London over 50 years ago, is one of his most remarkable, both owing to its large size, analogous to paintings, and to the fact that it is not preparatory or derived from a painting, but produced as an autonomous composition; a work of art in its own right.
Further highlights will include Walther von der Vogelweide: under der Linden an der Heide (Walther
von der Vogelweide: under the Lime tree on the Heather), 2014 (Courtesy of the artist and White
Cube), a recent work by Kiefer, which has never been exhibited before, and a new sculpture created
for the exhibition, depicting a tall sunflower emerging from a large pile of books, shedding golden
seeds onto their lead pages. The sculpture will be shown in dialogue with Van Gogh’s Piles of French
Novels, 1887 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)) and visualises the
importance of literature and poetry to both artists; Van Gogh was one of the most well-read artists of
the 19th century, and Kiefer makes words and literary references visually present in his work. Lastly,
De sterrennacht (The Starry Night), 2019 (Courtesy of the Artist and White Cube), a monumental
canvas of straw, gold leaf, and sediment of electrolysis by Kiefer will leave visitors with a lasting
impression of his resounding admiration of Van Gogh through his interpretation of the iconic Starry
Night.
Exhibition was developed in close collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. The exhibition is curated by Julien Domercq, Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts and Natasha Fyffe, Genesis Future Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Kiefer/ Van Gogh, 28th June – 26th October 2025, Royal Academy
The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries Tickets & Admission Tickets go on sale to the public in early March 2025. Friends of the RA go free. Advance booking with pre-booked timed tickets is recommended for everyone, including Friends of the RA.
Accompanying Publication The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with texts by Anselm Kiefer and Simon
Schama.
