Anselm Kiefer was born in 1945 in Donaueschingen. From 1969 to 1972 he studied art at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Freiburg with Peter Dreher, in Karlsruhe with Horst Antes and at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art with Joseph Beuys. From 1971 Kiefer lived and worked in Odenwald before moving 1992 to Barjac in France.

Nowadays no international public collection or private collection is complete without works by Anselm Kiefer. They have been shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well as in the Centre Pompidou in Paris, in the Ludwig Collection in Vienna, in the Tate Gallery in London or in the Guggenheim in Bilbao.