As We Search For Our Unique Style
Anselm Kiefer And Vincent Van Gogh Get Together In A Room
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A Travel Bursary
A travel bursary enabled contemporary artist, Anselm Kiefer, to go to France and walk in the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh. It was 1963 and Kiefer was eighteen years old; he’d been studying Van Gogh and was keen to see the places that had inspired his work. How lucky to receive financial help because who knows what path his career would have taken if he hadn’t made this pilgrimage.
From his home in Germany, Kiefer first went to The Netherlands, then to Paris where he saw the house that Van Gogh lived in from 1886-1888. Then on to the south of France where many of us would imagine Van Gogh sitting on a three-legged wooden stool painting in a field of ripening corn, corn that rippled gently in the breeze. Or he’d be standing amongst hundreds, no thousands, of sunflowers deciding which five to pick and take back to his neat little bedroom to arrange in a vase for a still life study.
Keeping a Diary
From his diaries of that journey, it is clear that Kiefer was searching for his own unique style, finding it hard to break from the powerful effect that Van Gogh had on his work. On 4 August 1963 he wrote: ‘I don’t want to try and copy Van Gogh’s style. That would be too primitive. I’d rather try to find my own language.’
Traces of regret flash across my conscience occasionally due to the fact that I have never kept a diary. I wish there was some kind of record in existence that marks the days I’ve spent on this earth, which shows my journey as an individual and as a writer. Kiefer’s entries are all the more interesting for the absence of my own. They demonstrate maturity and self-awareness. When describing two of the paintings he made, he records on 2 September 1963:
‘I was able to paint them straight through almost without any interruptions, without a hitch. That’s always a good sign. I will try to do more of this kind of painting. It’s just that I need a lot of time for it. So I worked until 1am yesterday.’
Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo serve as an alternative diary; they’re available on the Van Gogh Museum website and express a similar work ethic and enthusiasm to take hold of the moment; they provide a window on his life, his health, and his passion for his art.
Finding your Voice
I’m reassured to know that Kiefer strived to find a balance between using learned techniques and doing his own thing, what we would describe in the writing world as ‘finding your voice’. I struggle with this term, however, because no matter what I’ve read on the topic of finding one’s voice I’m unable to pin it down and, consequently, I don’t know if I’ve actually found it. Maybe it’s one of those things you never realise fully. It’s either here or there or it isn’t and you can only keep working to improve your practice and maintain honesty along the way.
Van Gogh puts this well in a letter to Theo dated 22 October 1882: ‘What is drawing? How does one get there? It’s working one’s way through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How can one get through that wall? – since hammering on it doesn’t help at all. In my view, one must undermine the wall and grind through it slowly and patiently.’
Even today, now eighty years old and still working in his studio complex in France, Kiefer feels the influence of Van Gogh, and he’s rarely satisfied. In a podcast episode of ‘This Cultural Life’ by the BBC, Kiefer was interviewed by John Wilson. He said that his paintings are never really finished… art is a process. Then he laughs and says that, of course, if they are bought there is nothing more he can do to them.
Kiefer / Van Gogh Exhibition
In celebration of Kiefer’s long life dedicated to the arts, The Royal Academy in London brought together paintings by both artists during the summer of 2025; the exhibition aimed to illustrate the connective tissue that links their work, and I was lucky enough to have visited.
Curated across the wide high walls of the galleries, the disparity in size was the thing that hit me most. Many of Van Gogh’s paintings are small enough to be carried under the arm whereas Kiefer’s span the width and height of a double, or even a triple, garage.
In this exhibition the pieces were chosen to demonstrate a kind of similarity, and they do in terms of subject matter but they differ greatly in the materials used. While Van Gogh dabbed his canvases with heavy brush strokes, Kiefer has taken paint and built with it. He paints and glues in layers using straw and pieces of burnt wood and molten lead and found objects which, together, tell a deeper story. As a viewer, you cannot help but get intrigued by the process of making. And I found myself moving through the gallery space to stand back and admire these large exhibits in one glance, then I would get closer, to inspect details, then I’d step back again. I likened my physical response to Kiefer’s pieces to that of sculpture—I dance in their company.
As a writer, I get inspired by art. When I stand in front of a painting I let my thoughts disappear into it, especially if there’s a vanishing point like in a landscape. And when the art is abstract, seemingly offering a simple flat plane, my eyes travel over it searching for a place to rest and reflect. While it’s sometimes hard to find the words to describe art, I think that looking at it gives me a certain sense of satisfaction in knowing that creative work is always a struggle and we never know what effect it will have on others, or how long that effect will last. It has to be enough, in the end, that we produce a piece of work that we can be just a little bit pleased with.
Credits & Links:
Photos my own, taken at the Royal Academy.
Kiefer / Van Gogh, 28 June - 26 October 2025, The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries | Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy. Kiefer’s diary extracts come from the exhibition’s ‘Guide for Friends’.
See Van Gogh’s letters here, and his letter of 22 October 1882 here.
Anselm Kiefer, 2025: BBC, ‘This Cultural Life’ (podcast, 5 July).
Have you found your voice? I look forward to chatting with you in the comments.
“I found myself moving through the gallery space to stand back and admire these large exhibits in one glance, then I would get closer, to inspect details, then I’d step back again. I likened my physical response to Kiefer’s pieces to that of sculpture—I dance in their company.”
Thank you for this really beautiful thoughtful piece, Yasmin. Thank you for taking me back to the memory of an exhibition in Berlin and my physical as well as my emotional response to Kiefer’s work.
Yasmin, this was such a gorgeous meditation on influence, style, and that lifelong tug-of-war between learning from the greats and trying to sound like ourselves. I’m Kelly — a slow-travel writer wandering the world with my husband — and so much of this resonated with me.
I loved how you framed Kiefer’s pilgrimage and Van Gogh’s letters as parallel diaries of becoming. That “invisible iron wall” quote stopped me in my tracks. It feels like the truest description of the creative process I’ve ever read — the slow, patient burrowing toward something that finally feels like yours.
And maybe that’s the secret: the voice isn’t a destination, it’s the trail we wear into the ground over years of trying.
Thank you for such a beautifully crafted piece. It stayed with me. 💛 Kelly