Jannis Kounellis

In this drawing, a thin roll of tallow with a wick, symbolizing an extinguished candle, is attached with two strips of white tape to a sheet of brown paper. The background is splattered with irregular dark blue smudges of paint that recall smudges of smoke. These irregular spots evoke marks made by the burning wick of the tallow cord. The work invites the viewer to question its very structure and the meaning of its unusual combination of composite elements.
Always confrontational and forceful, yet beautiful and often poetic, Kounellis's work engages the viewer on several levels: visual, emotional, and physical. It represents the artist's commentary on the surrounding reality and reflects his political attitudes. For example, his Fire installations of the late 1960s related his optimistic belief in revolutionary fervor, whereas the Smoke works of the early 1970s are symbolic of extinguished revolutionary zeal. According to Kounellis, "Smoke creates ghosts" and is a metaphor for history and the passage of time.
Kounellis's art is closely identified with the Italian Arte Povera movement of the mid-1960s. Encompassing both an aesthetic and a political dimension, the movement emphasized the use of everyday, poor (povera) non-art materials raised to the level of art through the artist's intervention, thus attempting a merger of art and life.