ArchitectureKünzelsau · Now open
David Chipperfield's Anselm Kiefer Pavilion opens in Künzelsau, Germany
A single concrete room, shaped with the artist, finally shows Kiefer's 11-metre Schwarze Flocken in the Würth sculpture garden.
Some paintings are simply too big for the walls they're given. Anselm Kiefer's Schwarze Flocken (2007), 11 metres tall and just over seven wide, is the largest work by the artist in the Würth Collection, and because of its size it had never been shown. Now David Chipperfield Architects has built it a home of its own: a pavilion in the small town of Künzelsau, north-east of Stuttgart.
It stands in the sculpture garden of Museum Würth 2 at the Carmen Würth Forum, a cultural centre Chipperfield's practice also designed, and speaks the same language: one monolithic volume of bush-hammered concrete, a sculpture in its own right. Kiefer worked with the architects on the room's proportions, openings and wall colours. Rather than relying on strict artificial climate control or lighting, the walls are built in three layers (concrete, brick and clay plaster) to regulate the climate naturally.
The painting takes its title, Black Flakes, from a poem Paul Celan wrote around July 1944 in Czernowitz after returning from a forced labour camp, responding to news of his parents' deaths in the Holocaust. Kiefer turns its winter landscape and grief into abstraction.
Worth the detour for anyone who likes a building made for a single work: one room, one painting, and very little else to distract.
Our summary of a story from Wallpaper*, published 16 October 2026. Read the original
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From Wallpaper*