Born in Piraeus, Attica, but a naturalized Italian citizen, Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus, 1947 – Rome, 2017) moved to Rome in his early twenties and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. There, he was introduced to Informal Art and Abstract Expressionism—two influences that would lay the foundation for his artistic path in the years to come. He made his debut in 1960 with a solo exhibition at La Tartaruga gallery in Rome, where he would go on to exhibit again in 1964 and 1966.
By 1967, Kounellis began producing works aligned with the ideological principles of Arte Povera, a movement in which he would later emerge as a leading figure. During this period, his Greek heritage became increasingly visible in his work, alongside elements such as live animals juxtaposed with the geometric structures of the exhibition spaces, the use of fire, and references to industrial materials and machinery.
In 1969, Kounellis took installation art a step further by integrating it into live performance. A key example is Cavalli, a piece featuring live horses tethered to the walls of Fabio Sargentini’s L’Attico gallery—where Kounellis had first exhibited in 1967 and would continue to return throughout the 1970s. Over the course of that decade, he exhibited prolifically, with notable shows at Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone in Turin (1971), Galerie Folker Skulima in Berlin (1971), Sonnabend Gallery in New York (1972), Galleria La Salita in Rome (1973), Galleria Forma in Genoa (1974), Galerie Rudolf Zwirner in Cologne (1975), Galerie Art in Progress in Düsseldorf (1976), Jean & Karen Bernier Gallery in Athens (1977), and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1977).
Kounellis debuted at the Venice Biennale in 1972, and the following year he participated in the Rome Quadriennale for the first time. Starting in the 1970s and continuing into the 1980s, the intense, revolutionary energy that had defined his earlier work gradually gave way to a more somber tone—reflecting a growing sense of disillusionment with the utopian ambitions of Arte Povera, which he saw as having been absorbed by the forces of consumer culture. This shift was perhaps most dramatically expressed in a 1989 installation at the Fundació Espai Poblenou in Barcelona, where freshly butchered ox quarters were hung from iron plates with meat hooks and lit by oil lanterns—a stark, visceral image of decay and confrontation.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Kounellis experienced a creative resurgence, returning to the monumental scale and theatricality of his earlier work. This renewed energy was evident in installations such as Offertorio in Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples (1995), Mulino in ferro in Piazza Ponte di Tappia, also in Naples (1998), and the 50th-anniversary monument to the Resistance in the main courtyard of the University of Padua (1995).
Around the same time, major exhibitions of his work were held across Latin America, including in Mexico City (1999), Argentina (2000), and Uruguay (2001). In 2002, Cavalli was once again exhibited, this time at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. That same year, at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, Kounellis constructed a metal-sheet labyrinth filled with signature elements from his artistic vocabulary—charcoal pits, cottonwood branches, burlap sacks, and stone piles.
In 2004, he created a new installation at the Accademia Gallery in Florence to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo’s David. In 2007, he produced Con Mattia Preti, an installation for the National Gallery of Palazzo Arnone in Cosenza. Around the same time, he designed the chariot for the Festival of Santa Rosalia in Palermo and inaugurated the Door of the Monastic Garden at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome.
In 2009, Galleria Fumagalli and the Adriano Bernareggi Museum in Bergamo dedicated a solo show and a site-specific installation to his work. In 2012, one of his pieces was also exhibited at the Palazzo Riso Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Palermo.
Kounellis’s work is represented in many major public and private collections around the world, including the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (MADRE) in Naples, MAXXI in Rome, the Roberto Casamonti Collection in Florence, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Tate Modern in London.
