Anselm Kiefer
The Seven Heavenly Palaces
The site-specific The Seven Heavenly Palaces installation, created for HangarBicocca in 2004, is one of the most important works by the German artist Anselm Kiefer. It takes its name from the palaces described in an ancient Hebrew tract, the Sefer Hechalot or "Book of Palaces", which describes the symbolic path of spiritual initiation of those who wish to enter into the presence of God. The work represents the culmination of Kiefer's entire artistic career, summing up his main themes and projecting them into a new, timeless dimension.
This can be seen in the way it interprets an ancient religion (Judaism) and represents the ruins of the West after the Second World War. It also shows us a projection into a possible future, from which the artist invites us to look back at the ruins of our own present. The seven towers, which weigh 90 tonnes each and vary in height between 14 and 18 metres – are made of reinforced concrete, using the corner units from goods containers as construction modules. Their forerunner is the La Ribotte project in Barjac, in the South of France, where the artist lived from 1993 to 2007. This consists of buildings, passageways and tunnels that wind their way across a vast area of the French countryside.
