The great majority of Kiefer’s works since his emergence in the late 1960s through the 1990s refer to subjects drawn from Germany and its culture.

The highly regarded German artist Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) began his career in the late 1960s, during a period when his country's intellectuals were involved in facing up to their nation's recent history—the Holocaust and the Nazi rape of Europe. Kiefer's work has continually dealt with these heretofore "taboo" subject matters, as well as with other elements of German culture and history, and it has effectively incorporated the provocative usage of both traditional and nontraditional materials. Kiefer is best known for his very large works, and this publication provides an unusually detailed look at the least-known aspect of his oeuvre, his smaller works on paper. There are fifty-four works on paper in this volume, and they cover the years from 1969 to 1993. All of them entered the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1995. Fifty-one are in a great variety of media—watercolors, acrylics, and painted-over photographs, for example—and they are thought to represent about one-fourth of the unique works on paper that Kiefer created between 1969 and the end of the 1980s. The remaining three are very large works composed of numerous woodcuts made slightly earlier and mounted together. The entire group comprises a comprehensive sampling of Kiefer's talent for blending biting commentary and humor. The author, Nan Rosenthal, Consultant in the Department of Twentienth Century Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, has concentrated on Kiefer's rich references to German culture and history, providing cogent insights particularly appropriate for an American audience, who might not be conversant with those sources. Many quotations from the artist, taken from two unpublished 1997 interviews with Rosenthal, are interspersed in the text, and these add an additional important element, especially since Kiefer has rarely permitted himself to be quoted. The inclusion of full-page color illustrations of all fifty-four works, as well as more than fifty black-and-white reproductions that demonstrate pertinent connections with various works by both Kiefer and other artists, also contributes to a volume that is fascinating both visually and in scholarly content.

He was an astoundingly inventive painter and draftsman, and, due to the continuity of the family trade and the industry that developed in prints after his works, Bruegel’s impact was widespread and long lasting.

One of the greatest Netherlandish artists, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30–1569) is best known today for his paintings of peasant life. Yet is was above all through his exceptional graphic work that he achieved widespread fame during the sixteenth century. His drawings and prints made after his designs, while based on traditional sources, are innovative and independent, and they are wide ranging in their subject matter. Among Bruegel's foremost achievements in the graphic realm is the naturalistic rendering of landscapes. In many instances inspired by the Alpine mountains and valleys the artists encountered during a journey in Italy he made as a young man, these views synthesize the imagery of Bruegel's Italian and Netherlandish predecessors at the same time they represent a new and highly influential departure: an independent landscape genre entirely focused on nature. Indeed, a sixteenth-century authors famously wrote of Bruegel, "he teaches us to represent ... the angular, rocky Alps, the dizzying views down into a deep valley, steep cliffs, pine trees that kiss the clouds, far distances, and rushing streams." The master also created a body of peerless figurative designs featuring demons, virtuous souls, fools, and faceless peasants tilling the land. In allegories, portrayals of proverbs, and biblical narratives he dissected the imperfections of human nature, giving free rein to his imagination and wicked sense of humor. Often Bruegel produced what one early observer called "fantasies and bizarre things, dreams, and imaginations" that were closely based on the work of Hieronymus Bosch and inspired his contemporaries to call him the second Bosch. Bruegel's graphic work has recently been the subject of scholarship that has reevaluated the parameters of his oeuvre, assigning to other artists drawings formerly believed to be by his hand and adding some new sheets to the canon. The new Bruegel who has emerged from these studies is the subject of this volume, which accompanies an exhibition held at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—surprisingly the first major show devoted solely to the master's drawings and prints. In essays of interest to the general audience and scholars alike, an international group of experts discusses the artist's life; his contributions as a draftsman and as a designer of prints; his social and intellectual context; and the posthumous survival of his art. Entries on the more than 140 works included in the exhibition further illuminate the master's genius and reveal meanings hidden in the imagery. Every print and drawing in the exhibition is reproduced and numerous comparative illustrations are offered. Provenances and references for all works, a bibliography, and an index are supplied.

Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502 – 1550) was renowned throughout Renaissance Europe as a draftsman, painter, and publisher of architectural treatises. The magnificent tapestries he designed were acquired by the wealthiest clients of the day, up to and including rulers such as Emperor Charles V, King Francis I of France, King Henry VIII of England, and Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici of Tuscany. At the same time, Coecke was remarkable not only for the complexity and unparalleled quality of his tapestries, but also for his fluency in various media: this lavishly illustrated volume examines the full range of his work, from tapestry and stained-glass window designs to panel paintings, prints, drawings, and architectural treatises. Though only forty-eight when he died, Coecke was one of the greatest Netherlandish artists of the sixteenth century. His paintings and drawings, initially wrought in the style of the Antwerp Mannerists, evolved through his enthusiastic response to Italian Renaissance design, and influenced generations of artists in his wake. This comprehensive study explores Coecke’s stylistic development, as well as his substantial contribution to the body of great Renaissance art in Flanders. Featuring twenty monumental tapestries, along with many of their cartoons and preparatory sketches, plus seven paintings, additional drawings, and printed matter—many of them newly photographed for this volume—Grand Design provides a thorough reappraisal of Coecke’s work, amply justifying the high regard in which Coecke’s work was held and its wide dissemination long after his death.

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its purpose is to publish original research on works in the Museum’s collection. Articles are contributed by members of the Museum staff and other art historians and specialists.

Associate Curator Elizabeth Cleland highlights the innovative design work of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, the focus of the upcoming exhibition Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry.

Curator Keith Christiansen remarks on the innovative way Valentin de Boulogne framed the scenes of his paintings, which gives viewers a front-row seat to observe the action.

This exhibition, drawn from The Met collection, positions Anselm Kiefer's art as a visceral and poetic consideration of the past and a means to understand our collective present and future.

On view December 13, 2017–April 8, 2018