A Painting So Big It Needed Its Own Building

By Amara Osei

Anselm Kiefer's Schwarze Flocken measures more than eleven meters tall and seven meters wide, and for nearly two decades no gallery could hang it. Now the painting has a building of its own. David Chipperfield Architects completed a freestanding concrete pavilion in Künzelsau, Germany, to house the work, and it opened to the public on October 13th, 2026 in the sculpture garden of Museum Würth 2. The occasion marked the painting's first public presentation since Kiefer made it in 2007.

That's the entire program: one painting, one room, one very patient client. The Würth Group commissioned the pavilion, and the largest Kiefer work in the Würth Collection finally met an audience.

What does the painting actually consist of?

Schwarze Flocken (Black Flakes) carries its weight literally. The canvas mixes oil, emulsion, shellac, earth, and twigs into a heavily textured surface — the artist's signature move. The title comes from a poem by Paul Celan, whose writing confronts the personal losses and devastation of the Holocaust. Kiefer's layered, bleak composition draws on that history, and the physical grit of the materials gives the subject its heft.

The challenge of exhibiting something this size, according to the project's framing, became the starting point for an entirely new building. Fair enough. Most museums would simply decline.

Who decided the architecture?

Kiefer, largely. The idea of a separate structure for a single artwork came from the artist himself, who has pursued similar arrangements for his work before. The building's footprint and height follow the spatial requirements of the painting, which gives Kiefer an unusual degree of influence over the architecture from the outset.

Inside, Kiefer worked directly with the architects to set the exhibition room's proportions, the positioning of its openings, and the color of its walls. The painting anchors the tall space, with exposed solid timber beams spanning overhead. Skylights between the beams introduce soft daylight from above, shifting through the day and across the seasons, gradually changing how the dense surface reads.

How does the pavilion handle climate — without climate control?

The 140-square-meter building takes an unconventional route. Behind the bush-hammered concrete exterior sits a layer of brickwork finished with clay plaster inside, forming a substantial wall assembly that responds to outdoor conditions. That construction keeps the interior frost-free without any active climate-control system, while the skylights replace the tightly regulated illumination typical of museum galleries.

In other words, weather and daylight become part of viewing the work. Whether that reads as generosity or risk depends, presumably, on the weather.

Where does the building sit?

The pavilion stands on a gentle rise at the southwestern edge of the Carmen Würth Forum — another David Chipperfield Architects project — among the works of the surrounding sculpture garden. Its compact, monolithic form carries textured concrete walls that echo the larger cultural complex nearby, which the Würth Group developed alongside its company headquarters. A shallow portico cuts into one side, offering a sheltered entrance and a brief transition from open landscape to tall interior.

The partnership runs deep. This is the latest chapter in a longstanding architectural relationship between Chipperfield's studio and the Würth Group. David Chipperfield and Martin Reichert led as partners, with project architects Berhard Danigel and Thomas Schöpf, executive architect Kraft + Kraft Architektenpartnerschaft mbB, structural engineering by Mayer-Vorfelder und Dinkelacker, and lighting consultation from Kardorff Ingenieure Lichtplanung.

After almost twenty years out of public view, Schwarze Flocken can finally be encountered at full size — in a room whose dimensions, wall color, and daylight the artist himself helped set.