Jannis Kounellis: gli anni sessanta

ML Fine Art is pleased to announce the exhibition "Jannis Kounellis: anni sessanta", from 23 March to 27 May 2022. 

The exhibition project conceived for this spring at ML Fine Art, on display from 23 March 2022, is focused on a crucial moment in the artistic career of Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus 1936 - Rome 2017), one of the most important figures of the Arte Povera movement.

Born in Greece, Kounellis moved to Rome at the age of twenty to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti. Distancing himself from the latest derivations of informal art, Kounellis soon developed an artistic approach immediately aimed at overcoming the traditional limits of the painting.

Through several works of outstanding quality, the exhibition aims to illustrate the period between 1961 and 1967 when the artist moved on from the dazzling cycle of Alfabeti (Alfabets) - works of great constructive and communicative impact, characterised by compositions of letters and numbers on a white background, - towards a gradual revival of more articulated forms of expression.

Remarkable canvas from 1961 perfectly illustrates the Alphabets series.  The symbols lose here their semantic value, and, reassembled in a structured form, they powerfully appear on the surface of the artwork, rendered in this manner indecipherable. In contrast, the painting dated 1963 with the silhouette of a rainbow is a wonderful example of the small group of works - a prelude to the “Roses” series of 1966-67 - that shows the artist's renewed interest in figurative art and in painting itself.  This period, consisting of lesser-known but highly significant paintings, represents Kounellis's direct reappropriation of elements of reality, re-elaborated in a manner that distances these works from the tendencies of the then-emerging American pop art.

Through a selection of previously rarely exposed artworks and with the contribution of scientific research conducted by Francesco Guzzetti (University of Florence), the exhibition aims to present to the public a period when the artist was able to confront and anticipate the trends of the new avant-garde, imprinting his unique expressive style on an entire period of art history between the 1950s and 1960s.

The exhibition is realised in collaboration with Rizziero Di Sabatino.