Jannis Kounellis (Pireo, 1936 - Rome, 2017).

Jannis Kounellis, after being rejected by the Academy of Art in Athens, moved to Rome at the age of twenty, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1960 he exhibited for the first time his paintings at the gallery La Tartaruga in Rome. His early works are canvases with painted letters and numbers, as well as stylized flowers and natural elements.
From 1967 he came in contact with Arte Povera and began to create works with natural materials. He uses elements such as stones, empty sacks or with grains, iron, lamps, but also people and live animals. It is famous his work Cavalli (1969), in which in the gallery L’Attico in Rome twelve horses are tied to the walls, symbol of an ideal clash between nature and culture. Between 1972 and 1973 Kounellis took part at the Venice Biennale and at the Quadriennale in Rome.
Since the 1990s, Kounellis’ work has been based on monumental sculptures, as the work Offertorio of 1995 in Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples and the work of 2001 in which the artist nails shoes on the rails of the subway of Naples.
His works arise from the communicative urgency that the artist feels. Kounellis’s works contain conflicts and contrasts, that push the viewer to question the very meaning of things. Art must be within the reach of everyone. The role of the artist is to upset the tradition to hope for a change in the social structure.