Greek
Jannis Kounellis was born in 1936 in Piraeus, Greece. In 1956, Kounellis moved to Rome and enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arti. While still a student, he had his first solo show, titled L'alfabeto di Kounellis, at the Galleria la Tartaruga, Rome, in 1960. The artist exhibited black-and-white canvases that demonstrated little painterliness; on their surfaces, the artist stenciled letters and numbers.
Influenced by Alberto Burri as well as Lucio Fontana, whose work offered an alternative to the Expressionism of Art Informel, Kounellis was looking to push painting into new territory. He was inspired, too, by the work of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, and by the earlier abstractions of Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. Kounellis's painting would gradually become sculptural; by 1963, the artist was using found elements in his paintings. Kounellis began to use live animals in his art during the late 1960s; one of his best-known works included 11 horses installed in the gallery. Kounellis not only questioned the traditionally pristine, sterile environment of the gallery but also transformed art into a breathing entity. His diverse materials from the late 1960s onward included fire, earth, and gold, sometimes alluding to his interest in alchemy. Burlap sacks were introduced, in an homage to Burri, though they were stripped of the painting frame and exhibited as objects in space. Additional materials have included bed frames, doorways, windows, and coat racks. People, too, began to enter his art, adding a performative dimension to his installations. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kounellis continued to build his vocabulary of materials, introducing smoke, shelving units, trolleys, blockaded openings, mounds of coffee grounds, and coal, as well as other indicators of commerce, transportation, and economics. These diverse fragments speak to general cultural history, while simultaneously they combine to form a rich and evocative history of meaning within Kounellis's oeuvre.
In 1967, Kounellis was included in an important group exhibition entitled Arte povera e IM spazio at the Galleria La Bertesca, Genoa. Curator Germano Celant coined the term Arte Povera to refer to the humble materials, sometimes described as detritus, which Kounellis and others were employing at the time to make their elemental, anti-elitist art. Kounellis had his first solo show in New York in 1972 at the Sonnabend Gallery. During the 1970s and 1980s, his work was shown extensively; among these was a solo exhibition that traveled in the early 1980s to several museums in Europe, including the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Obra Social, Caja de Pensiones, Madrid; the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. In 1985, the Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, mounted an important exhibition of the artist's production. The following year, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, staged a retrospective exhibition of Kounellis's work; the show traveled to the Musée d'Art Contemporain, Montreal. In 1989, the artist was given an exhibition at the Espai Pobenou in Barcelona. In 1994, Kounellis installed a selection of over 30 years of his work in a boat called Ionion and docked this floating retrospective in his home port of Piraeus. The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía held an exhibition of Kounellis's work in Madrid in 1997. The artist lives in Rome.
Solo Exhibitons
2006 Jannis Kounellis. Atto Unico, La Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan
2006 Jannis Kounellis, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz
2005 Edinburgh College of Art und Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
2005 Jannis Kounellis, Opus I, Albertina, Wien and Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole, Saint-Etienne
2005 Kounellis, Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris
2004 Jannis Kounellis. New Works, Sprovieri, London
2004 Kounellis in Sarajevo, Ars Aevi Forum, Sarajevo
2004 National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
2004 Kounellis, Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne
2003 Jannis Kounellis at St. John's Church, St. John's Church (Herning Kunstmuseum), Herning
2003 Jannis Kounellis, Torrione Passari, Molfetta
2003 Jannis Kounellis, Monastero Mechitarista, Isola di San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice 2003 Jannis Kounellis, Palais de l'Unesco, Paris
2003 Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck
2002 Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome
Senza Titolo…, Hallen für Neue Kunst, Schaffhausen
Jannis Kounellis, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent
Opening of stazione Dante, subway, Naples
2001 Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne
Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea, Prato
Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo
Bottini dell'Olio, Livorno
Kunststation St. Peter, Cologne
Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris
Notturno tenebroso, Diözesanmuseum, Freising
Group Exhibitons
2006Where Are We Going? Opere scelte dalla Collezione Francois Pinault, Palazzo Grassi, Venice
Corrispondenze. Dal presente al pasato, Centro per l'arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
2005 Italian Art 1950-1970, Masterpieces from the Farnesina Collection, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi
Arte Povera, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota
Atto Primo and Atto Secondo, La Collezione, MADRE Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples
2004 Immendorf Kounellis, Villa Massimo, Rome
Shanghai Art Museum: Encounters with Modernism, Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam
Works and Days, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk
Photo Image in American Prints: 1960s-1990s, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco
2001 Kounellis, Prato, Gli Ori
2000 Jannis Kounellis en Mexico, Chiesa di San Auguitin, Mexico City, Mexico
1999 Jannis Kounellis. II Sarcofago degli Sposi, Osterreichisches Museum fur angewandte Kunst, Vienna
1998 Jannis Kounellis, via monte di Tappia, Naples
Kounellis, Galerie Leiong, Paris
Alfredo Pirri, Jannis Kounellis Bernhard Rudiger, Volume!, Rome, Italy
1997 Kounellis, Refettorio delle Stelline, Milan, Italy
Jannis Kounellis: Die Front, das Denken, der Sturm, Museum Ludwig in der Halle Kalk, Colonia 1996 Kounellis, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
Kounellis, Castelluccio di Pienza - La Foce, Italy
Jannis Kounellis, Galleria Bernd Kluser, Monaco
Jannis Kounellis. La Balera, Galleria Loza Koper, Capodistria
1995 Kounellis, Salara, Bologna
Jannis Kounellis, Chateau de Plieux, Plieux
Jannis Kounellis. Die eiserne Runde, Hamburger
1994 Kounellis. Fumo di pietra, Galerie Leiong, Chatellerault
1993 Jannis Kounellis, Lineare notturno, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Kunsthalle, Recklinghausen
Jannis Kounellis, Belvedere, Castello, Prague
1992 Jannis Kounellis, Cimitero di Mercatello sul Metauro
Kounellis, Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy
Kounellis, La commedia dell'arte, Lucio Amelio s.r.L, Naples
1991Kounellis - Frammenti di Memoria, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, Kunst Museum, Winterthur
Kounellis, Casa Centrale degli Artisti, Nuova Tretjakov, Moscow, Russia
Kounellis, Galerie Leiong, Zurich, Switzerland
Jannis Kounellis, Synagoge Stommein, Pulheim
1990 Kounellis, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
Kounellis, Espai Poblenou, Barcelona
Kounellis, Via del mare, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
La stanza vede, Haags Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag