Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis, born in 1936 in Piraeus (Greece), lives and works in Rome. Along with artists like Beuys, M. Merz, Morris and Serra, he is part of a second wave of modernists who, in the 60s, radically expanded our vision of fine art with a new iconography of materials. As a pioneering figure of arte povera, Kounellis used poor materials  relics and fragments of Mediterranean history and everyday life placing these objects in often-startling juxtapositions, to create a new poetic context. Kounellis conjures a 20th century version of the mythic village blacksmith, forging his environments with wood, coal, iron and fire.