Anselm Kiefer's large-format, 36-page book or 'bleibuch' made of lead and acrylic in 2001, titled for Robert Fludd: the secret life of plants, and dedicated to the 17th century English mystic and scholar belongs to a small, but significant collection of merely 18 works, presented here, in this book, for this very first time. This book also documents some of Kiefer's other recent works in the context of his La Ribaute studio residence in France, and also his relationship with the art collectors Carl and Eva Grosshaus Kiefer's monumental 'bleibuch' was created as an homage to Robert Fludd and functions as a visual thesis for every plant on earth in correlation with star cosmology. Kiefer is particularly interested in Fludd's ideas relating to the analogies between the microcosm and macrocosm. Fludd believed, for example, that each plant on Earth had its equivalent in the stars. Kiefer uses sunflower seeds to evoke the 'dim light which falls from the stars', as described in Corneille's The Cid. Since 1993, Anselm Kiefer has lived and worked at his 'hill studio' at Barjac, a few kilometres outside Nimes. His workplace holds a special importance for the artist. La Ribaute - the studio and its surrounding estate - extends over some 35 hectares and features an extraordinary complex of corridors, caves, old industrial buildings and secluded, private spaces.

Like Kiefer's work, La Ribaute is a repository of multiple impressions and influences. German text.