Little Angel by Beatrice Brandini
Anselm Kiefer: Für Antonin Artaud: Helagabale, 2023
Palazzo Strozzi presents a new and WONDERFUL large exhibition dedicated to one of the most important contemporary artists: Anselm Kiefer.
Anselm Kiefer: Engelssturz (Fall of the Angel), 2022-2023
Anselm Kiefer: Engelssturz (Fall of the Angel), 2022-2023
Conceived in dialogue with the spaces of Palazzo Strozzi, the exhibition takes us on a journey that includes historical works and new productions by the extraordinary German artist, such as Engelssturz (Fall of the Angel), a seven-meter high canvas created specifically for the Renaissance courtyard.
Anselm Kiefer: Luzifer, 2012-2023
Anselm Kiefer: The School of Athens, 2022
Anselm Kiefer: Für Antonin Artaud: Helagabale, 2023
For the central figure the artist is inspired by the work of Luca Giordano, the title Engelssturz is traced at the top left while Michele is written on the right in the Hebrew alphabet. The rebel angels are expelled from Paradise by the archangel who holds the sword and points to the sky with his left index finger, manifesting the divine will and revealing his name at the same time.
Anselm Kiefer: Das Balder-Lied, 2018
Anselm Kiefer: En Sof, 2016
Anselm Kiefer: A phantom city, peaked of phylum polk, 2023
“The exhibition welcomes visitors in the courtyard with a gigantic Engelssturz (Fall of the Angel), whose subject is taken up in the Apocalypse.” Antonio Galansino. “It explains how Evil arrived in the world and gave rise to Original Sin.” Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer: Cynara, 2023 (detail)
Anselm Kiefer: Verstrahlte Bilder, 1983-2023
The image of the “fallen angels” becomes the starting point of the exhibition: a journey through allegories and forms that make us reflect on the relationship between spirit and matter, memory and present, myth and history, through Kiefer’s poetic and imposing works.
Anselm Kiefer: Sol Invictus, 1995
Anselm Kiefer: Hortus Philosophorum, 1997-2011
A glimpse of the room with works by Anselm Kiefer
The exhibition, curated by Arturo Galansino, offers us a 360 degree overview of the artist, we can in fact admire pictorial works, sculptures, installations and photographs, in a journey full of quotes that range from ancient history to the Second World War, from classical philosophy to modern literature, where the absolute protagonist remains the human being, with his conflicts and contradictions.
Anselm Kiefer: Philosophorum, 1997-2011. Daphne, 2008-2011. Nemesis, 2017
Visiting this exhibition (until 21 July 2024) allows you to understand how important the different techniques used by the artist are in the creation (I add in the “explanation and urgency”) of the work. Materials such as seeds, plants, plaster, metals, gold leaves reveal new and always different details, evoking a strongly poetic dimension in a sensorial connection with the observer.
“Rubble is like the flower of a plant; they are the radiant pinnacle of an incessant metabolism.” Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer: SOL INVICTUS Heligabal, 2023 (detail)
A moment from the press conference with Arturo Galansino General Director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and Giuseppe Morbidelli President of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation
The exhibition is magnificent, I was lucky enough to visit it as a preview and although I often use enthusiastic terms for the exhibitions I visit (I really love art!), this is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. It is rich in suggestions and poetry; admiring Kiefer’s works you feel helpless, after all we are nothing compared to the greatness of the universe and certain tragic testimonies of the past have not “educated” us or improved us, but rather are inexorably repeating themselves in the face of an almost general indifference.
“Isaac Luria, a sixteenth-century Jewish mystic and theologian, wrote that in the beginning God withdrew, created a free space, and the world formed on its own. And this is smarter. God poured out his grace on the world and the world did not accept it.” Anselm Kiefer
Good life to everyone!
Beatrice