Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis was born on March 23, 1936 in Piraeus, Greece and has lived and worked in Rome since 1956. He was a seminal contributor to the radically and internationally influential Arte Povera group. Often epic in scale, Kounellis’s work possesses a grandeur that reflects his frequent choice of themes and ideas from the past and particularly from Ancient Greece. Kounellis began his career as a painter, inspired in part by the work of American abstract artists of the 1950s. However, during the 1960s he abandoned traditional painting in favour of a host of everyday materials with which he created sculptures and installations, using wool, coal, iron, stones, earth, wood and even, controversially, live animals. Ordinary objects and natural matter held a directness and immediacy for Kounellis who was seeking to establish more concrete communication between the viewer and the artwork.

The work included here, Untitled, was first shown at Bernier Eliades gallery in 1979 and the wall drawing depicts the original gallery floor. Beneath the small classical sculptural head are anemones that are kept fresh for the duration of the exhibition. The name anemone comes from the Greek word for ‘windflower.’ According to Greek mythology, the anemone sprang from Aphrodite’s tears as she mourned the death of Adonis. Thought to bring luck and protect against evil, legend has it that when the anemone closes its petals, it is a signal that rain is approaching.