In 2024, German artist Anselm Kiefer transformed Florence’s Renaissance Palazzo Strozzi with Fallen Angels, an exhibition of monumental paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations. Its governing image—the fall from heaven into matter—opens onto Kiefer’s larger world of Christian angels, Jewish mysticism, classical mythology, alchemy, war, and Germany’s reckoning with Nazism. Using gold, lead, ash, plants, discarded clothing, and deliberately damaged surfaces, Kiefer creates art in which ruin becomes the beginning of transformation. This talk by art historian Brenda Edgar explores the exhibition as a unified contemporary environment and asks what angels, rebellion, and redemption can mean in the aftermath of catastrophic history. This program is intended for adults.

Join us for our “Art History Illustrated” talk series, held the third Thursday of every month at 5:30 p.m. This monthly illustrated talk series is presented by art historian Brenda Edgar, in collaboration with The Floyd County Carnegie Library Cultural Arts Center.

Image: Anselm Kiefer, Fallen Angels, 2024. As exhibited in the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy.