LONDON—The West End galleries are finally waking up from their winter torpor, and just in time for the big February sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary that always bring some big guns to town for multimillion-pound sales. Two major exhibitions opened this week—one showing the work of an oh-so-familiar artist before his career even began; the other revealing an artist now at the height of his powers.

Andy Warhol’s beginnings are celebrated at the Timothy Taylor Gallery with 130 of his early works on paper created between l948 and 1960. That time period spans Warhol’s art school years in Pittsburgh through to his first tentative decade in New York, when he worked as a commercial artist to pay the artistic rent.

Interpreted brilliantly by Steven Bluttal, an independent curator formerly with the Andy Warhol Estate, this exhibition reveals the naissance of much of Warhol’s later work, in terms of subject matter and of media, which ranges from the blotted-line technique to the use of gold leaf, spray-paint, complex collage, ballpoint pen, Aniline dye and tempera.

It also includes an exquisite little catalog that is the same mini-me size as Warhol’s privately printed hand-colored books. It’s of extreme interest for its choice mid-1950s drawings—which are, in their sure lines, minimalist approach and ephebic subject matter eerily reminiscent of David Hockney’s draughtsmanship—up to Feet, made in l960.

The synergy between Warhol’s personal efforts and studies for his commercial work, such as the advertisements he drew for the I. Miller Shoe Co., is just one reason contemporary art historians, and any Warhol fans, should make tracks to this revelatory exhibition.

Another reason is that that this vast and comprehensive collection can not only be seen but bought as well, for £10,000 to £100,000 a piece through March 3, 2007.

And all of it is thanks to the visionary dealer Anthony d’Offay, who worked with Warhol and has been amassing this collection over a long period of time. He is also co-curating at the moment a large Warhol exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland, which will be the centerpiece of this summer’s Edinburgh International Festival. (Warholians, book your tickets now!)

---------------

The other side of Piccadilly Square is basking in the bright sunshine of a major Anselm Kiefer moment.

At White Cube, there is Anselm Kiefer’s new and stunningly powerful exhibition entitled “Aperiatur Terra;” whilst the courtyard at The Royal Academy is showing two of Kiefer’s tottering, monumental towers for the first time in Britain.

This latest White Cube exhibition shows us Kiefer at the height of his powers, incorporating organic materials such as mud and leaves as well as paint and text to create wonderful new works.

The installation in the ground floor gallery, entitled Palmsonntag, comprises l8 paintings hung collectively on a single wall, with a 13-meter palm tree (imported from Morocco) laid out on the gallery floor. As the title suggests, this work tells the story of the beginning of Christ’s journey into Jerusalem prior to his arrest, death and resurrection. The organic materials used function as the palette through which landscapes are created, while overlaid texts add meaning and experience. The cumulative effect is—honestly—awe-inspiring.

In the lower gallery, four vast panoramic landscape canvases are hung to create a single installation. Each of the surfaces of these works appears strewn with flowers, or engulfed in flame. References are made to the poetry of Victor Hugo, the fall of Troy, the Nazi campaign on the Russian front and to the prophet Isaiah, amongst others, suggesting an ongoing pattern of veneration, degeneration and renewal that is drawn—as Kiefer said in an interview on the BBC’s “Front Row”—from his earliest childhood memories in his bombed and later rebuilt German homeland.

The exhibition is on until March l7, when it travels to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, from the middle of May.

---------------