LAURA SATERSMOEN: In this room full of huge works by Anselm Kiefer, we’ll hear from two of the Fisher sons: Bob and John.
BOB FISHER: The Kiefers in the collection are so large, they’ve never been in my parents’ house. They’ve been in The Gap Galleries.
JOHN FISHER: My father probably appreciated Kiefer more than my mother did, and Kiefer clearly is wrestling with the challenges of post-war Germany and what it means to be a German.
BOB FISHER: The strategy of collecting is a very personal thing. If you look at most museum collections, they have one piece by many artists and they well represent the history of art, but not necessarily the depth and breadth of a period. The art in my parents’ collection was really from the 1960s to the year 2000, and it’s a wonderful opportunity for people to experience what was going on in the art world during that time, albeit a very personal filter that it passes through. It gives them an opportunity to understand an artist when they see the Kiefer paintings, or when they go and see the Richter paintings, the audience can really experience what that artist was about.
JOHN FISHER: There was an early collector of Kiefer from Japan who had collected I think as many as 20 pieces. And then he had gone bankrupt. And my father heard about this. He knew what the pieces were. He knew that they were incredible. And so he flew over to Japan to see them and made a decision on the spot to buy all of them.
