Serigraph on cardboard Utitled by Jannis Kounellis, 1970s

Serigraph on cardboard Utitled by Jannis Kounellis, 1970s 1312395

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Item description

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1977-1987. B&W silkscreen print on white plywood cardboard with a postcard with 2 colour bars assembled with a clasp. Cm 68x91, signed and numbered by hand by the artist on the front. N. / 100 copies Artwork belonging to the folder "Contrappunti - 7 notazioni visive di Accardi, Boetti, Buren, Kounellis, LeWitt, Paolini e Pistoletto" published by A.E.I.O.U Edizioni d'arte (Rome). Rare graphic work of very high quality and perfectly preserved in the protective folder. Not framed. Present certificate of authenticity and provenance (signature and embossed stamp of the publisher with photographic reference and numbering). The image shows a numbered/framed copy for illustrative purposes only. The numbering of the copy delivered may differ depending on availability. It is shipped in professional, traceable packaging. We are at your disposal for information and details. BIOGRAPHY Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus, Greece 1936 - Rome 2017) is a leading exponent of what critic Germano Celant called "arte povera". At the age of twenty, he left Greece and moved to Rome to study at the Academy of Fine Arts under the guidance of Toti Scialoja, to whom he owes the influence of abstract expressionism, which, together with informal art, constitutes the fundamental combination from which his creative career takes its cue. He made his debut in 1960 when he held his first solo exhibition at the "La Tartaruga" gallery in Rome. Compared to his masters, Kounellis immediately showed a very strong communicative urgency that led him to reject individualistic, aestheticising and decadent perspectives and to exalt the public, collective value of artistic language. In his first works, in fact, he painted typographic signs on a light background that allude to the invention of a new order for a shattered, pulverised language. His first exhibitions, ideologically close to the Arte Povera movement, date back to 1967. In these exhibitions, the use of everyday products and materials suggested a radically creative, mythical function for art, with no concessions to mere representation. There are also clear references to his Greek origins. His installations become veritable stage sets that physically occupy the gallery and surround the spectator, making him a protagonist in a space that also begins to fill with live animals, as opposed to geometries constructed with materials that evoke industrial production. Fire, the mythical and symbolic element par excellence, also appears in "Margherita di fuoco" (Daisy of fire), generated, however, by a blowtorch cylinder. In 1969, the installation became a real performance with the "Horses" tied to the walls of Fabio Sargentini's "L'Attico" gallery, in a sumptuous ideal clash between nature and culture in which the artist's role was reduced to the minimal level of a substantially manual industriousness, almost that of a man of toil. With the passage into the 1970s, Kounellis's volitional enthusiasm took on a different weight, the result of disenchantment and frustration at the failure of the innovative potential of Arte Povera, which was swallowed up despite itself by the commercial dynamics of consumer society, guarded by the traditional spaces of fruition such as museums and galleries. This sentiment was expressed by the famous door closed with stones, presented for the first time in San Benedetto del Tronto, and then over the years, with significant structural variations full of poetic meanings, in Rome, Mönchengladbach, Baden-Baden, London and Cologne. In 1972 Kounellis participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale. The years of bitterness continued with installations in which the vitality of fire was replaced by the dark presence of soot, while live animals gave way to stuffed ones. The culmination of this process is perhaps the grandiose work presented at the Espai Poublenou in Barcelona in 1989, characterised by quarters of freshly slaughtered oxen fixed by hooks to metal plates and lit by oil lanterns. In more recent years, Kounellis's art has become virtuously mannerist and has taken up themes and suggestions that had previously characterized it with a more meditative spirit, capable of interpreting with renewed awareness the primitive propensity for monumental emphasis. Examples of this new direction of research are the 1995 installation in Piazza Plebiscito, Naples, and then the exhibitions in Mexico (1999), Argentina (2000) and Uruguay (2001). In 2002, the artist reproposed the installation of horses at the Whitechapel in London and, shortly afterwards, at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, he built an enormous labyrinth of sheet metal along which he placed the traditional elements of his art, such as the "charcoal pits", the "coals", the "bricks" and the "bricks".

ID: 15787-1635174295-26287

Item details

White
Black

Color

Other

Material

Excellent

Condition

Italian

Origin

60-70

Time period

Item sizes

68 cm

Height

91 cm

Width

0.1 cm

Depth


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