Anselm Kiefer, an artist who uses barbed wire, lead, twigs, and rust to create melancholy works that often address the legacy of World War II, was named winner Wednesday of the German book trade’s annual peace prize.

The 58-year-old award, worth $39,000, honors Mr. Kiefer’s portrayal of a “destroyed present, chewed up by the past and presented with a pared-down rhetoric,” a statement from the German Book Trade Association said. The artist will receive the prize during a ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 19.

“The strong impact of Anselm Kiefer’s work comes from the ability to develop a picture language for the timeless and acute themes that he addresses, making the beholder a reader at the same time,” the statement said.

Mr. Kiefer, 63, is considered one of Germany’s most important living artists. His work raised the question of “whether there could be German artists at all after the Holocaust and the Third Reich’s appropriation of the national cultural and artistic tradition,” the statement said.

He had a solo exhibition last year at Paris’s Grand Palais, which he filled with concrete towers in various states of collapse and seven “houses” with white walls and corrugated iron.

The prize usually honors an author, not a visual artist. Last year’s winner was the Holocaust historian Saul Friedländer. Previous prize holders have included the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, the philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas, the American novelist, filmmaker, and essayist Susan Sontag, and the novelist, playwright, and essayist Martin Walser.