Die Argonauten

From 15 February to 26 March 2011 Ivorypress Space II presented the exhibition of Die Argonauten, by Anselm Kiefer. The exhibition consisted of a collection of 27 works of pencil on photographs, which make up the unique book Die Argonauten, the third book of the LiberArs series published by Ivorypress. This project, created between 1990 and 2010, was exhibited to the public for the first time on this occasion.

The author began to conceive the creative process after a meeting with friends and collaborators, back in the eighties. When the meeting was over, ‘the table looked like a battlefield: empty cups, leftovers on plates, crumbs, stains’, says the artist in the text “Anselm Kiefer on Jason and the Argonauts”, included in the artist’s book published by Ivorypress. The scene provided the inspiration for Kiefer to recreate—through symbolic and poetic images—the vicissitudes of the legend of Jason and the Argonauts.

As a result of his special handling of light, the pictures reflect the aura of the Greek myth that guided Kiefer in this project. A story about the tenacity of humankind to overcome any obstacle, ‘a myth that each of us carries inside, even without ever having read anything about it’.