21 Facts About Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis was a Greek Italian artist based in Rome.

Jannis Kounellis lived in Greece during the Second World War and Greek Civil War before he moved to Rome in 1956.

From 1960 to 1966, Kounellis went through a period of only exhibiting paintings.

In some of his first exhibitions, Jannis Kounellis began stenciling numbers, letters, and words onto his canvases, often reflecting advertisements and signs seen on the street.

From 1963, Jannis Kounellis introduced found objects in his artworks, among them live animals but fire, earth, burlap sacks, and gold.

Jannis Kounellis replaced the canvas with bed frames, doorways, windows or simply the gallery itself.

Jannis Kounellis's work has become integral to numerous renowned, international museums' collections.

In 1967, Jannis Kounellis became associated with Arte Povera, a movement theorized by curator Germano Celant as a major shift from work on flat surfaces to installations.

Finally, Jannis Kounellis was included in 'RA3 Arte Povera + Azioni povere' which was organized by Marcello Rumma and curated by Celant.

In 1967, Jannis Kounellis installed "live birds in cages along with rose-shaped, cloth cut-outs pinned to canvas" alongside his painting.

Jannis Kounellis continued his involvement with live animals later in 1969, when he exhibited twelve living horses, as if they were cars, in the Galleria l'Attico's new location in an old garage in Via Beccaria.

Gradually, Jannis Kounellis introduced new materials, such as propane torches, smoke, coal, meat, ground coffee, lead, and found wooden objects into his installations.

Jannis Kounellis looked beyond the gallery environment to historical sites.

In 1997, Jannis Kounellis installed thirteen wardrobes and two doors that were sealed in lead along a scaffolding ledge that blocked the entry to a central hall.

Jannis Kounellis stated that incidental adjustments are certain as aspects that can indicate the human liberty of life.

Jannis Kounellis participated in many international exhibitions, including the Biennale of Paris, Documenta, the Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Biennial, and the Biennale of Sydney.

Jannis Kounellis's work has been exhibited in many museums and institutions such as the Kunstmuseum in Bern, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, The Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, and the Neue National gallery in Berlin.

In 1994, Jannis Kounellis held an exhibition titled Ionion, in which he displayed his work on a boat docked in his town of birth in Piraeus, Greece.

Jannis Kounellis later curated another exhibition that on another ship called Apollo in 1973 as an addition to "Ionion".

In October 2009, Jannis Kounellis exhibited many works at Tate Modern Gallery in London, United Kingdom.

On 16 February 2017, Jannis Kounellis died at the Villa Mafalda hospital in Rome at the age of 80.