Anselm Kiefer's Women of Antiquity from July 11th in Ravello

The Ravello Foundation, in collaboration with the Lia Rumma Gallery, presents “Le Donne dell'Antichità” by Anselm Kiefer, an exhibition that will be held at Villa Rufolo from 11 July to 26 August 2025 as part of the Ravello Festival 2025. The project focuses on one of the most recurrent themes in Anselm Kiefer's research: the female figure as a generative, destructive or initiatory force. "The Women of Antiquity", inspired by protagonists of Roman history, Greek mythology and Nordic traditions, are represented as archetypal or symbolic presences. Evoked names, faceless or fragmented bodies, absent heads or heads replaced by objects such as books, lead or barbed wire, clothes stiffened in plaster, ritual vestiges, suspended between ruin and monumentality. These figures inhabit a time outside of chronology and challenge every linear narrative of power and knowledge. The exhibition itinerary unfolds in the spaces of Villa Rufolo and its historic garden, designed by Francis Nevile Reid in the 19th century. The stratified architecture of the villa – with its rooms, loggias and views of the coastal landscape – enters into dialogue with the works, underlining their scenic and metahistorical dimension.

The exhibition brings together some female figures from history and myth, such as Paete, who recalls the gesture of Arria, a Roman matron who hits herself in the stomach while saying the famous phrase to her husband: “Paetus, non dolet”. Or Tusnelda, wife of Arminius, taken to Rome as a prisoner and described by Tacitus as a proud and courageous woman. And again, looking to history, Apollodors Liste whose long train welcomes the unwinding of a lead reel on which are applied a series of photographs of ruined architecture or other symbolic elements in the artist's production to indicate the unfolding of history and the timeless dimension of myth and its return to contemporaneity.

Ravello, a city that has always been linked to the great European culture, has welcomed over time central figures of thought, art and music – from Richard Wagner to Gore Vidal. In this context, the presence of Anselm Kiefer – an artist whose work has questioned memory, history and the form of knowledge – fits into an ideal continuity between past and present.

Born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, Germany, Anselm Kiefer is one of the most significant contemporary artists. His oeuvre includes paintings, sculptures, display cases, installations, books, and works on paper such as drawings, woodcuts, watercolors, and photographs. The materials he uses—from lead, concrete, and glass to fabrics, ashes, and plants—are as vast as they are symbolically significant. Kiefer’s vision embraces philosophy, history, and literature, bringing to light the importance of the sacred and the spiritual, myth and memory, metamorphosis and renewal. He has lived and worked in France since 1993.