WATERCOLOUR PAINTING IN GERMANY: DURER TO KIEFER

Thu 20 Mar 2025, 2–3pm

At the Museum and Online

This event takes place at the Museum in the Headley Lecture Theatre, and online via Zoom.

Tickets £8 each. Book your ticket below.

With Timothy Wilcox, historian, author and independent curator

Anselm Kiefer produced a significant body of work in watercolour some of which you will see in the Museum's forthcoming exhibition of his Early Works. This was somewhat unusual in the context of cutting-edge contemporary art.

This talk introduces some of the highlights of a well-established practice of watercolour painting in Germany and the German-speaking world.

On two journeys to Italy, in 1494, and again in 1505, Dürer recorded his travels in watercolour; one of the most haunting is in the Ashmolean collection (View of the Cembra Valley, below). He became, historically, but also metaphorically, the prototype of the travelling artist using watercolour as a tool of exploration, recording new and unexpected sights and perceptions in this uniquely portable and flexible medium.

A watercolour in blues, browns and greens by Albrecht Durer View of Cembra Valley in Trentino-Alto Adige in Southern Italy.

View of the Cembra Valley in Trentino-Alto Adige in Italy, Albrecht Dürer, 1495, brush and watercolour in blue, green & brown

A delicate watercolour in washy pastels of the Garden at Pretzfeld Castle in Germany by Curt Herrmann

The Garden at Schloss Pretzfeld (Pretzfeld Castle), Curt Herrmann, 1916, watercolour

Expressionistic landscape painting showing suns and mountains with prommentary by artist Anselm Kiefer entitled Art will survive its ruins

Die Kunst geht knapp nicht unter (Art will survive its ruins), Anselm Kiefer, 1975, watercolour & ink on paper, Hall Collection © Anselm Kiefer

As well as reflecting a different understanding of watercolour to the model familiar in Britain, Timothy Wilcox's talk offers hints which deepen our appreciation of an important aspect of Kiefer’s art.

In choosing watercolour, Kiefer knowingly reached back through the centuries of a specifically German engagement with the medium, to the works of Joseph Beuys, of Expressionists including Emil Nolde, of Paul Klee with his profound interest in children’s art, and back to Goethe, with his support for a generation of Romantic painters, all well aware of the pioneering landscapes of Albrecht Dürer.