Kiefer in Milan: The Alchemy of Memory and Matter

In Milan, the painting of Anselm Kiefer becomes incandescent matter and recovered memory. With The Alchemists, the artist presents a monumental cycle of 42 canvases conceived as a single, powerful installation for the Sala delle Cariatidi at Palazzo Reale. Here, amid architecture still bearing the scars of war, Kiefer stages a female pantheon that weaves together history, myth, and regeneration. At its center are women long removed from official narratives: alchemists, proto-scientists, visionary figures suspended between knowledge and persecution. Through a dense, corroded pictorial language - charged with lead, ash, gold, and oxides - faces and bodies surface like apparitions from the material itself, caught in an ongoing process of combustion and rebirth. Each canvas becomes an alchemical laboratory where destruction and transformation coincide. The dialogue with the space is crucial. The mutilated Caryatids of the hall amplify themes of loss and resilience, turning the installation into an immersive, almost initiatory experience. Among the figures evoked are Caterina Sforza, Margaret Cavendish, and Christina of Sweden - symbols of a female knowledge finally brought back into the light. The Alchemists is not merely an exhibition, but an act of rewriting memory, in which painting becomes a gesture of care and recognition.