Jannis Kounellis: Io sono un pittore

The exhibition Jannis Kounellis: Io sono un pittore, curated by Vincenzo de Bellis and organised in collaboration with the Archivio Kounellis in Rome, is the first to examine the work of Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus, 1936 – Rome, 2017) taking painting as its main focus. The starting point and guiding theme of the exhibition is the phrase often uttered by the artist: “I am a painter”, a statement that has less to do with technique or medium, and more with his approach to reality.

The exhibition spans the entirety of Kounellis’s career and brings together over 35 works, from the late 1950s to 2014. It is not a chronological narration but rather unfolds as a constellation of lines linking matter and weight, language and signs, memories and silence, scenes and icons, thus forging an alternative perspective: a broader, more radical one than the conventional view of the artist as one of the leading figures of Arte Povera.