Jannis Kounellis, a major figure
of the 'Arte Povera' (Poor Art) movement, died in Rome on
Thursday at age 80.
The artist left Greece and moved to the Italian capital at
age 20, where he would live, work and create art that sparked
debate and revolutionized Italian and international art.
A painter and sculptor, Kounellis created a language in
constant evolution.
Born in the Greek port city of Piraeus in 1936, Kounellis
came to Rome to study at the Academy of Fine Arts and began to
build his career there.
Although he continued to call himself a painter, puzzling
some, Kounellis created mostly memorable performance art and
installations, from horses tied to the walls of th L'Attico
gallery (1967) to a famous closed door in San Benedetto del
Tronto - followed by versions in Rome, London and Cologne - and
one of sides of beef exhibited in Barcelona (1989).
He made use of fire, labyrinths, sacks, coal, iron and
butterflies to create his unique works.
Those of a size ideal for hanging on walls - he was amazed by
Jackson Pollack's enormous canvases, seen for the first time in
Italy at a 1958 exhibition in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte
Moderna - he said expressed ''a private feeling, while the
installations are public, given the space they take up. And they
bring art to the country, into squares and parks.''
Deeply disappointed in the 1970s by the failure of the
innovative potential of Arte Povera and swallowed up despite
himself by commercial dynamics (a feeling expressed through the
famous door closed with stones presented for the first time in
San Benedetto del Tronto), in the following decades Kounellis
was made to rediscover his initial leanings towards monumental
emphasis.
In 2002 he created a horses installation in Whitechapel,
London, and shortly thereafter at Rome's Galleria Nazionale
d'Arte Moderna he made an enormous steel labyrinth along which -
as if they were harbors, of a sort - were traditional elements
of his art, such as coal, cotton, jute sacks and piles of
stones.
In 2004, he celebrated the 500th anniversary of
Michelangelo's creation of 'David' with an installation at
Florence's Galleria dell'Accademia.
In 2007 he was in Rome again to create the gate of the
monastery garden of the Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme,
enlivened by colored glass, and in 2011 at the Venice Biennale
as well as in China for a series of exhibitions where he
presented writing with porcelain pieces as ideograms that lead
to each other in 20 large iron tables.
Last year, the Monnaie de Paris hosted a wide-ranging
retrospective of his works.
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