Van Gogh through the eyes of Kiefer

Vincent van Gogh was Anselm Kiefer's first artistic inspiration. At the age of 18, the young student set off on a pilgrimage to Holland, Belgium and France in the footsteps of his idol, visiting the places where van Gogh had lived and worked. It was the beginning of a bond based on an artistic and spiritual affinity that lasted for decades and continues to this day.

The Royal Academy in London celebrates the great German artist's 80th birthday with an exhibition that juxtaposes Kiefer's works with the paintings and drawings by van Gogh that inspired them. Visitors are encouraged to re-examine van Gogh's works through the eyes of Kiefer, who wrote that he was "struck by the rational structure and confident composition of his paintings, as life slipped more and more out of his control."

The small drawings that Kiefer made in 1963 during his pilgrimage, faithfully imitating van Gogh's landscapes, are combined with large paintings - 8 metres wide and more - that the German artist-alchemist has created over the past decade using not only oil and acrylic paints but also gold leaf, straw, clay, wood, electrolysis sediment and sunflower seeds.

For Kiefer, as for van Gogh, the sunflower represents the cycle of life and the human condition, rooted in the earth but always reaching towards the sky and the sun, closed at night and ready to open during the day. While the Dutch artist's sunflowers are a riot of colour, Kiefer's are menacing black giants, looming over the body of the artist lying on the ground.

Equally black and menacing are the crows that populate Kiefer's 'Nevermore', a reinterpretation of van Gogh's 'Wheat Field with Crows', one of the last paintings by the Dutch artist before his suicide. In Kiefer's colossal canvas, crows swoop down from above into a field of wheat, messengers of death ready to suffocate that symbol of the most vital and generous nature.