Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis (Greek, b.1936) is a performance artist and sculpture associated with the Arte Povera movement. He attended college in Athens before traveling to Rome in 1956 and enrolling at the Academy of Arts. His earliest works experimented with stenciled numbers, letters, and words on canvas, eventually incorporating found objects and staging performances that reflected his ideas about society and politics. 

In 1967, he became associated with Arte Povera, a movement dedicated to attacking the established norms of government, industry, and culture. During this time, Kounellis increasingly created works that juxtaposed disparate materials, including stone, cotton, coal, bed-frames, and doors.

Untitled, 1968

At the time this piece of work was created Kounellis - who was living in Rome and was one of the leading members in the Arte Povera movement - had abandoned painting as a medium and had embraced an art made of everyday materials.

Preceding to the work's inclusion in the exhibition Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, held at Tate Modern in 2001, the artist reworked the piece, removing some of the original wool that had become matted and replacing it with fresh wool. He explained to the curators at Tate that he made the work partly in response to Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952. The upright posts corresponded to the diagonal poles of Pollock's painting while the blue and white wool is teased out to mimic the dripped paint.

Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952

Jannis Kounellis piece 'untitled' just goes to show that we can seek out inspiration from other areas within art which aren't in our specialism - as Kounellis is more of sculpturer whereas Pollock is more of a painter. But this act of borrowing ideas from other mediums is something I aim to do myself within this project. Although Kounellis was recreating a painting which inspired him, I believe that the way in which he placed the material, poetically tells a story.