Jannis Kounellis

In Kounellis’s earliest works one can already glimpse this tension between a search for historic and poetic identity and a desire to break with the status quo by opening up and incorporating into the quotidian the explosive energy of his contradictions. Kounellis worked in Rome from the end of the ‘Fifties, and his first exhibition was held in 1960 at the Galleria La Tartaruga. His paintings of that period had words, letters, numbers and directional signs standing out boldly on monochrome surfaces showing the visual marks of the urban context in pictorial language. The letters or symbols, drawn freehand on the canvas or on paper and then filled in with black enamel, float in the space, resulting in an interpretation that is open and autonomous rather than compositional. Like fragments of tombstones and urban inscriptions of contemporaneity, they clarify the tensions and contradictions of the metropolis, in contrast to the space that contains them and that seems capable of continuing in an infinite sequence. The canvases, painted directly on the wall, on thin cotton sheets, like works of calligraphy, assume, in their supple lightness and agility, an environmental and sensory dimension in three dimensions, to the point where Kounellis would sometimes wear them or ‘sing’ the letters and numbers in his studio. This was one more step toward exiting conventional formalizations and entering the painting with all the body’s faculties and potential, a goal he will strive for throughout his career.
In 1968 he took part in the show “Arte Povera + Azione Povera” at the Old Dockyards of Amalfi. In 1969 he presented his famous work with twelve live horses at the Galleria L’Attico of Rome and exhibited works at the “Arte Povera” exhibition at the Galleria La Bertesca of Genoa. He began creating large installations using natural elements or objects from everyday life such as real people and live animals, stones, cacti, instant coffee, carding-wool, jute sacks, empty or filled with corn, darting oxy-hydrogen flames, fragments of copies of classical sculptures, paraffin lamps, iron consoles and railway tracks. The reading of the whole that is created is neither literal nor narrative, but instead indicates simultaneously the concretization of an idea and the consequent construction of an image that intervenes in the fracture between history and representation, between totality and fragment. Since 1969 the artist has realized with great continuity many exhibitions and projects in Naples. Several works from his many shows at the Lucio Amelio gallery are now in prestigious collections world-wide and represented in this retrospective. Kounellis has honoured the city with an installation in Piazza Plebiscito in 1996 and a permanent sculpture in via Ponte di Tappia in 1998. From the very beginning he also created theatre projects and stage sets. In his most recent installations he also makes use of everyday furniture and objects, which he sets out on a monumental scale. Kounellis is the Italian artist who has most frequently exhibited in the most important museums world-wide. He has taken part in seven editions of the Venice Biennale from 1972 onwards, and was at Documenta in KASSEL in 1972 and 1982. His most recent exhibitions include that at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1980, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam in 1990, the Museo Nacional Centro Reina Sofia of Madrid in 1996, the Ludwig Museum of Cologne in 1997 and the Museo Pecci of Prato in 2002.
 

Jannis Kounellis. Labirinti
Bruno Corà
ITALY - 2003
Gli Ori

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Jannis Kounellis. Labirinti
Bruno Corà
ITALY - 2003
Gli Ori