At 18, Anselm Kiefer hitchhiked through Van Gogh country—Zundert to Arles—with a sketchbook and a travel grant. Sixty years later, the German artist returns to that early encounter. This exhibition traces Van Gogh’s influence on Kiefer’s practice, pairing works by both artists across three intimate rooms at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Van Gogh’s bold structure and clarity of vision left a deep impression, and Kiefer’s new monumental pieces draw that legacy out across lead, straw, and pigment. A reckoning with artistic lineage and Post-Impressionist style, the show charts how one artist’s technique helped shape another’s lifelong ambition. —Charlie St John