Milan, an exhibition of Jannis Kounellis's works from the 1960s at ML Fine Art

From March 23 to May 27, 2022, the ML Fine Art gallery in Milan, for its spring exhibition project, is hosting the exhibition Jannis Kounellis. The Sixties, which focuses on a crucial moment in the artistic career of Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus, 1936 - Rome, 2017), one of the most important exponents ofArte Povera. A Greek-born artist, Kounellis moved to Rome at age 20 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. Moving away from the latest derivations of informal art, Kounellis soon developed an artistic practice immediately aimed at transcending the traditional limits of the painting.

Through some important works, the exhibition intends to recount that moment, between 1961 and 1967, in which the artist transited from the dazzling season of the so-called Alphabets (works characterized by compositions of letters and numbers on a white background, of great constructive and communicative force) toward a gradual recovery of more articulated forms of representation. A 1961 canvas well illustrates the Alphabets series: rendered indecipherable in this way, the signs lose their semantic value and, recomposed into a structure, emerge forcefully from the surface of the work. A 1963 canvas, in which the silhouette of a rainbow stands out, on the other hand, is a splendid example of the small group of works (preluding the 1966-1967 Rose series) in which the artist shows a renewed interest in figuration and painting. Comprised of lesser-known but highly significant paintings, that season marks Kounellis’s direct reappropriation of elements of reality, which are reworked in the realm of painting in ways that move away from the then-emerging trends of American pop art.

Through a selection of works rarely exhibited in the past and with the contribution of a scientific research conducted by Francesco Guzzetti (University of Florence), the exhibition thus aims to reveal to the public a season in which the artist was able to confront and anticipate the trends of the new avant-garde, imprinting his own expressive mark on an entire period of art history at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. The exhibition is in collaboration with Rizziero Di Sabatino.

For information visit the ML Fine Art website.

Pictured is the exhibition layout.

Milan, an exhibition of Jannis Kounellis's works from the 1960s at ML Fine Art

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