Artwork: Anselm Kiefer, Engelssturz (det.), 2022-2023. Photo: Georges Poncet
In Anselm Kiefer’s monumental recent exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Angeli caduti (Fallen Angels), there appears an equivalence with the falling of the divine angelic beings, especially the figure of Lucifer, with that of humanity. The historical, philosophical and spiritual coalesce with the contemporary, whether references of war such as the wing of an airplane protruding from a canvas, the names of modern artists such as the French surrealist Antonin Artaud, or the presence of sunflowers which brings Vincent Van Gogh to mind and his capturing of the light of Southern France, all these flawed humans who reach for the ineffable, even the divine, but are also caught in the hellish activities of battle or grounded in the material world emphasised by the sheer materiality of his paintings and sculptures.
The massive painting Engelssturz with its saturated gold-leaf sky and the angel either falling or flying above the earth, epitomizes the struggle between good and evil, the divine and earthly matter. Kiefer comments about the process of creating his art, “Destruction is part of the creative process. I place my paintings outside: I submerge them in baths of electrolysis.” The alchemical and transformative aspect of the process heightens the tension between the materiality of the work while the subject strives to reach beyond to higher dimensions of knowing and experience.
In the last room of the exhibition, Kiefer features the words of the Italian poet, Salvatore Quasimodo, traced along the walls, “Everyone stands alone at the heart of the world/ pierced by a ray of sunlight/ and suddenly it’s evening.” The conflict between light and dark within the human condition, of striving to go beyond what is base and material, whether to embody goodness, to feel the divine in one’s life, to stand in the light, even when darkness prevails, is an ever-present theme in Kiefer’s art, and one that is never truly resolved.