Your Golden Hair, Margarete

1980

Not on view

This work’s title comes from "Death Fugue" by the Romanian-Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan (1920–1970). Widely read in postwar Germany, the poem is set in a concentration camp and narrated by the Jewish inmates, who suffer under the camp’s blue-eyed commandant. Singing "your golden hair, Margarete / your ashen hair, Shulamith," they contrast German womanhood, personified by Margarete, and Jewish womanhood (Shulamith was King Solomon’s dark-haired beloved in the Song of Songs). Here, as in most of Kiefer’s more than thirty works devoted to Margarete, the German heroine is represented by only a symbol of her "golden hair"—sheaves of wheat in the countryside.

Artwork Details

Title: Your Golden Hair, Margarete
Artist: Anselm Kiefer (German, born Donaueschingen, 1945)
Date: 1980
Medium: Watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on paper
Dimensions: 16 1/2 in. × 22 in. (41.9 × 55.9 cm)
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: Gift of Cynthia Hazen Polsky, in memory of her father, Joseph H. Hazen, 2000
Object Number: 2000.96.7
Rights and Reproduction: © Anselm Kiefer
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

More Artwork

By Anselm Kiefer

In the same medium

From the same time and place

A slider containing 5 items.
Press the down key to skip to the last item.

Morgenthau Plan, Anselm Kiefer German, Acrylic, emulsion, oil, and shellac on inkjet prints mounted on canvas — Morgenthau Plan
Anselm Kiefer
2012

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom, Anselm Kiefer German, Gouache, sand, ash and charcoal on two torn and pasted photographs — Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom
Anselm Kiefer
2000

Autumn Forest, Anselm Kiefer German, Watercolor, opaque watercolor, and graphite on papers — Autumn Forest
Anselm Kiefer
1970

Wild Emperor, Anselm Kiefer German, Watercolor and acrylic on paper — Wild Emperor
Anselm Kiefer
1975

Brünnhilde's Death, Anselm Kiefer German, India ink, watercolor, and acrylic on joined paper — Brünnhilde's Death
Anselm Kiefer
1976

Research Resources

The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.

To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.

Feedback

We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.