Jannis Kounellis was a Greek-Italian painter and sculptor and one of the first exponents of the art movement Arte Povera. In the 1960s, like many other artists of his generation, he began to pursue new trends in artistic expression and to experiment with new languages in art, as a critical response to the socio-political situation. Works by Jannis Kounellis can be found in collections such as Tate Modern, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, to name but a few. Throughout his life, Kounellis was the subject of major retrospectives, including at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Kounellis presented at international exhibitions such as documenta, Kassel; Venice Biennale; Istanbul Biennial; Sydney Biennial, and many others.

Creating situations rather than objects, Kounellis used odours, sounds, and ‘poor’ materials like wool, coal, iron, clay, plants, wood, fire or living animals in his art. The roots of this desire to trouble and upset the spectator’s expectations is astonishingly present in the artist’s first paintings, as he tackled questions related to classic forms of art. By using techniques that allowed him to collage and overlap materials, Kounellis created paintings that exceeded their contours and opened outward into the space of the viewer. The work Untitled is a prime example of how Kounellis understood the medium of painting, both at a conceptual level and a technical one, as shown by the complexity of his use of various techniques and materials.