The controversial work of the German artist Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) was a complex examination of many themes, from alchemy to his country's Nazi past, often explored through such unconventional materials as lead and straw.

Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, southern Germany, on March 8, 1945, during the final days of the collapse of the Third Reich. Growing up in a divided postwar Germany, he would eventually confront through his art the German burden of the Nazi legacy. As a young man in the mid 1960s he first studied French and law before pursuing the study of art at academies in Freiburg and Karlsruhe in the late 1960s.

An early conceptual art exercise entitled Occupations (1969) remains one of his most controversial works. It consisted of a series of photographs of Kiefer dressed up in military garb while performing a Sieg Heil salute in such countries as France and Italy. He...