Jannis Kounellis Unpacked: Commerce, Taste, and the Psychology of Coffee

Publication date: July 12 2026
Type: News

Jannis Kounellis, among the leading protagonists of Arte Povera, introduced real and everyday materials into the artwork, such as iron, charcoal, burlap, and coffee. These materials are never neutral, but rather carriers of memory, history, and a social dimension. For Kounellis, art does not represent reality, but incorporates it directly into the exhibition space. In this perspective, coffee is not an abstract symbolic element, but a concrete presence that activates the senses and modifies the perception of the environment.

The aroma of coffee present in the work presented at DIB becomes part of the installation, capable of evoking individual and collective memories tied to travel, labor, and cultural exchange. Following an in-depth exploration of the work on display, a tasting session will take place, drawing inspiration from these reflections to offer an experience that unites perception and awareness. Every cup becomes an opportunity to read a geography, a path, and a stratification of stories. The gathering invites the public to observe coffee not merely as a beverage, but as cultural and historical matter, in line with the principles of Arte Povera.

The event is held as part of the program “Italia Reloaded. Tradition, Aesthetics and Innovation between Taste and Memory.”

Insights

Jannis Kounellis: The Matter of Space and History

Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus, 1936 – Rome, 2017) was one of the giants of twentieth-century art, a central figure whose influence transcended the boundaries of traditional painting to arrive at a universal language made of matter, space, and history. Born in Greece, Kounellis moved to Rome in 1956 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts under the guidance of Toti Scialoja. It was in the capital that the artist found the fertile ground for his aesthetic revolution, indissolubly marking the transition from modern to contemporary art.

Kounellis's debut took place in 1960 at Rome's historic Galleria La Tartaruga with the exhibition "L'alfabeto di Kounellis." In this initial phase, the artist exhibited hermetic canvases featuring black letters, numbers, and traffic signs on a white background. These works were not simple messages, but sign-objects that broke with lyrical abstraction and Art Informel, seeking a new objectivity. The artist himself declared that the use of these symbols was a way to "start from scratch," decontextualizing language to restore its physical and spatial value.

From the mid-1960s, Kounellis's research underwent a radical mutation. The artist abandoned the two-dimensionality of the canvas to invade real space. In 1967, he participated in the exhibition "Arte Povera - Im Spazio" at the Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa, curated by Germano Celant. It was the official birth of the Arte Povera movement, of which Kounellis became the leading exponent. His vocabulary was enriched with "primary" and everyday materials such as charcoal, wool, iron, cotton, stones, burlap sacks, and even live animals.

Famous is the 1969 installation at Fabio Sargentini's Galleria L'Attico, where Kounellis exhibited twelve live horses tied to the walls. This work shook the art world, eliminating any separation between life and representation, between nature and culture. In the seventies and eighties, Kounellis consolidated his international fame, bringing his installations to the most prestigious museums in the world. His work became a reflection on European history and collective memory. Fire, in the form of gas flames or traces of smoke on the walls, and smoke itself became recurring elements, symbols of energetic transformation and sacrifice. His works became monumental iron structures that supported or "imprisoned" fragile materials, creating a constant dialectical tension. His participation in exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, where he would be present in numerous editions starting from 1972, and Documenta in Kassel, editions 5, 7, and 8, consecrated his role as a protagonist of the global scene.

The new millennium saw Kounellis engaged in site-specific installations of enormous emotional impact. In 2002, at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderne di Roma, he set up the famous exhibition "Atto unico." Here, the artist designed a labyrinth of iron sheets that crossed the monumental rooms of the gallery, hosting burlap sacks, stones, and charcoal, creating a tight dialogue with the neoclassical architecture of the building. In 2006, the MADRE Museum in Naples dedicated a broad retrospective to him, emphasizing the artist's deep bond with Mediterranean culture. In the following years, Kounellis continued to exhibit incessantly, from the Monnaie in Paris in 2016, where he transformed the historic spaces into an industrial archaeology site, to the posthumous and monumental retrospective at the Fondazione Prada in Venice in 2019, curated by Germano Celant. The latter represented the first organic tribute after his passing, offering a complete vision of his creative journey through over sixty works.

Today, the works of Jannis Kounellis are preserved in the permanent collections of the most important museums worldwide, from MoMA in New York to the Tate Modern in London, confirming his status as an internationally historicized artist.