| JANNIS KOUNELLIS | you can also see the exhibition and the works on ARTSY | |
| five artworks | browse the book published in 2007 | |
| 20 november – 31 december 2020 |
“In the 1960s, I was designed as an ‘artist’ because no-one knew how to define a heap of coal. But I’m a painter, and I lay claim to my initiation in painting because painting is the construction of images, it doesn’t indicate a manner, even less a technique. Each painter has his own way of seeing and methods of constructing an image, and the common approach which consists of associating traditional art with the word ‘painter’ and an anarchistic, modern and experimental role with the word ‘artist’ is ridiculous.” Jannis Kounellis | ||
Jannis Kounellis, Senza titolo, 1967, Roma, ph. Claudio Abate |
On several occasions, Kounellis publicly expressed the weight of his “presumed” guilt in having decreed the end of a way of doing painting, in his eyes stripped of all efficacy and credibility. It had met its end along with the culture of a society that had fallen into genuine tragedy, winding up with millions of deaths and ruins in the biggest conflict ever experienced by humanity. Bruno Korà, Jannis Kounellis, p.16, edizioni Il Ponte, Firenze 2007 | ||
Jannis Kounellis, Senza titolo, 2006, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, ph. Manolis Baboussis |
Personal accoutrement such as overcoats, shoes, beds and their associations with travel, rest and home or sense of place suggest the world of the wandering refugee. Kounellis’s affecting works are frequently marked by traces of humanity, in a sort of homelessness, part of an incessant search for a synthesis of art and life, and an exploration of the relationship between them. John Daly, Jannis Kounellis. Disegni e manufatti, p.6, Hillsboro Fine Art, 2012 | ||
Jannis Kounellis, Senza titolo, 2006, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, ph. Manolis Baboussis |
We are in fact addressing an all-encompassing vision of the figurative arts, where painting, sculpture and architecture come together in a single representation. Each tiniest detail, from the raw surface of the steel to the chalk mark bounding off an area, the carcass of beef, the coal, the stain, the lead, the canvas, whether it be bale or sail, beyond its semantic value has a valency that is strongly and insistently corporeal, urgently claiming its tangibility. Nothing can be left out of the rendering of its image, since it lives on everything: on the full and empty, on light and shadow, on the feeling that each element carries within it. What we are addressing is a sculptural and architectural dimension that bears comparison only with the artistic practice of the Renaissance. | ||
Jannis Kounellis, Senza titolo, 1991 |
What emerges is an austere dimension, undoubtedly lofty, where man’s position is established, like his fate. The form, marked and delimited by the trace on the floor or the paper, by the edges of the steel plate, by the tall walls of the labyrinth or the cage, consistently encloses the formless – whether this be a natural datum: coal, earth, lead, coffee, or an element that oozes the impression of life: a coat, jacket, scarf, blanket, or the very living being itself. This ordering of parts, at times complex and intricate, at others simple as an epiphany of illumination, renders the artist’s tenacious endeavour to capture and lock up life and death in the page of a work of art. Andrea Alibrandi, Jannis Kounellis, p.9, edizioni Il Ponte, Firenze 2007 | ||
Jannis Kounellis, Senza titolo, 2014 |
AVAILABLE WORKS
Jannis Kounellis. Five Artworks was last modified: November 19th, 2020 by