Kiefer. Le Alchimiste

Palazzo Reale presents Kiefer.Le Alchimiste, a new cycle of paintings by Anselm Kiefer conceived for the Sala delle Cariatidi. The artist has created 42 monumental canvases dedicated to women who, through alchemy, contributed to the birth of modern science. The works engage in dialogue with the hall’s wounded architecture, marked by the 1943 bombings that mutilated the Caryatids, transforming the space into a powerful metaphor of destruction and regeneration.

Conceived as a unified and deeply symbolic work, the cycle intertwines myth, history, and collective memory. Painting becomes an alchemical process: lead, oxides, gold, ash, and flowers undergo combustion and material stratification from which female faces and bodies emerge, intense, non-idealized presences. Each canvas becomes an act of resurrection, a laboratory in which matter is transfigured.

The exhibition constructs an ideal pantheon dedicated to figures such as Caterina Sforza, Isabella Cortese, Marie Meurdrac, and Margaret Cavendish, among other protagonists of a body of knowledge long marginalized. Kiefer restores their voice and authority, rescuing them from damnatio memoriae and recognizing in their practice a tension akin to his own artistic research.

Promoted by the Municipality of Milan–Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale and Marsilio Arte, the exhibition is curated by Gabriella Belli and is part of the Cultural Olympiad of Milano Cortina 2026.