Artists
Jannis Kounellis
Jannis Kounellis, originally from Greece, resided in Rome and was prominent among the ‘Arte Povera’ Italian artists who worked with ‘poor’ and humble everyday materials, with beginnings in the 1960s. His paintings, drawings, sculptures and performances incorporated found objects, live animals, and elemental materials as an alternative to traditional artmaking practices. Street signs, burlap sacks, clothing, furniture, newspaper, birds, horses, fire, earth, copper, coffee, and hemp rope appeared in his work. At times he used the interior architecture of a space as a stage, where art and reality would merge theatrically to suspend disbelief. Along with the Arte Povera artists, he was influenced by the writer Umberto Eco’s regard of the artwork as an ‘open field’ wherein meaning is created through dissimilar elements and actions, and their contextual approach to the individual viewer.
Artist bio
Greek artist Jannis Kounellis (1936–2017, Piraeus) studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Rome (1956) and was Professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1993–2001). His work is in numerous collections including Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; S.M.A.K. – Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam; Tate, London; among others.