Jannis Kounellis (1936)
Italy

"Jannis Kounellis, born in 1936 in Greece and based in Rome since 1956, is a major artist on the contemporary art scene and an emblematic figure of Arte Povera.

Jannis Kounellis is one of the emblematic figures of Arte Povera, an Italian movement that emerged in the early 1960s, in which, among others, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Giovanni Anselmo, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Pino Pascali appear.

With the exhibition Arte Povera – Im Spazio, in 1967 at the Bertesca gallery in Genoa, Kounellis developed in his works the use of simple and industrial materials: iron, cotton, coal, wood, coffee, fire, jute bags or even living animals, so many elements used for their relationships with the world of work or for their physical and cultural oppositions: soft and hard, tar and steel, industrial and agrarian, steel and jute. His installations become real stagings which entirely occupy the exhibition space and surround the spectator, making him an actor in the event.

Kounellis goes so far as to contrast geometric works made of industrially produced materials with living animals. Thus, in 1969, he presented live horses attached to the walls at the L'Attico gallery in Rome, creating a clash between nature and culture in which the role of the artist was reduced to a minimum.

During the 70s and 80s, Kounellis' work was presented more and more: he participated for the first time in the Paris Biennale in 1971 and the Venice Biennale in 1972; a monographic exhibition is presented in several European museums – at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London and at the Caja de Pensiones in Madrid; he exhibited in 1977 at the National Museum of Modern Art in the city of Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux dedicated a major exhibition to him in 1985 and the following year the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago presented a retrospective of his works.

At this time, Kounellis' work darkened and became more dramatic: the fire gave way to soot and the living animals to stuffed creatures. The culmination of this period took place at the Espai Poblenou in Barcelona in 1989 where he exhibited quarters of freshly slaughtered oxen, attached by hooks to metal plates and lit by oil lamps.

In 1994, he brought together a selection of works produced over around thirty years on a boat called Ionon and moored this floating retrospective in the port of his hometown of Piraeus. Subsequently, Kounellis was invited all over the world: to Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, England.

More recently, he presented his work at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 2007; then at the Musée d’Orsay in correspondence with Millet’s Angelus. From July 2008, he was invited to reside for three years at the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire. Although Kounellis uses the space to install his works, he considers himself a painter, the volume to be occupied being treated like a canvas."

(Source, website, Seroussi)

Works :

• Fiori difuoco (1970)
• No title (1973)