When it comes to painting with texture and colossal dimensions, Anselm Kiefer surpasses any contemporary artist. This German Neo-Symbolist led me deep into dark emotions akin to the aftermath of war and the mortal struggle to comprehend spirituality. While attending his ongoing exhibit, Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, at the SFMOMA -- which ends this weekend -- I felt sporadic fits of disbelief in the sheer size of the gigantic canvases (nearly 2 stories wide and tall) he intricately splatters with buckets full of oil paint, acrylic, and shellac. But size isn’t all that’s fantastic about Kiefer’s work, the complex mixture of earth, lead, dried plants, wire, straw, and even sunflower seeds propels organic notions way beyond obvious. I couldn’t hold myself from stepping up close to examine the grimy painting surfaces. Using deep desert earth cracks, lava-like impasto streaks, and liberal applications of black pigment, his grandiose compositions grip viewers like faiths lure lost souls. The apocalyptic aesthetic Kiefer obsesses with stems from his tireless allusions of death and destruction thanks to World War II -- him being born at the end of the war, 1945 -- and remains powerful and pathetically relevant to the continual violence in Iraq. Bravo SFMOMA! Anselm Kiefer deserves the utmost recognition for addressing life’s most ubiquitous subjects: death, annihilation, rebirth, and religion. © copyright 1992-2007 All images, designs and text in this page cannot be sold or used without written consent from Arnold H. Chao.