Jannis Kounellis

Greek-born Italian artist Jannis Kounellis started studying painting in Athens and continued at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome after relocating to Italy in 1956. In the 1960s, as a critical response to the sociopolitical situation, similarly as many other artists of his generation, he began to pursue various new trends in artistic exploration and to experiment with new languages in art, sometimes taking them to the extreme of artistic expression. He replaced the two-dimensionality of the framed canvas with installations involving bed frames, doors, windows, fabric, and found objects from everyday life, and also primary natural elements such as earth, fire, gold, plants, and even live animals.

In 1967 Kounellis took part in the exhibition Im Spazio at the La Bertesca gallery in Genoa. All the participating artists shared an interest in the space between art and life, the typical aesthetics of found materials, and a rational approach to representing reality, not unlike conceptual art. The growing number of artists criticizing in this way the dominant position of the established art, political, and social institutions evolved into a new art trend. The exhibition curator
Germano Celant named it Arte Povera, and Kounellis became one of the most prominent protagonists of this important European art movement. He gradually introduced other materials into his installations, such as smoke, coal, wheat, meat, ground coffee, lead, and found wooden objects. He used the gallery space with all its specifics like a stage, a scene where reality and fiction entwine, a stage on which the seemingly incompatible can be brought together.

The artist’s involvement in space reaches beyond the physical limitations of the gallery. Every exhibition project presents a new challenge. Specific layout of the City Art Gallery Ljubljana comprising several floors has led to careful consideration of the most harmonious spatial organization and to the final decision to use only one floor, on which the exhibited works from several periods will be brought together into an autonomous visual whole. This exhibition is Kounellis’s first major presentation in Slovenia and his second recent encounter with the Ljubljana art public; in 2011, he participated in the group show "Traveling Companions" at Mestna galerija.

Jannis Kounellis

The artist’s involvement in space reaches beyond the physical limitations of the gallery. Every exhibition project presents a new challenge. Specific layout of the City Art Gallery Ljubljana comprising several ...