born 23 March 1936 in Piraeus, Greece; died 16 February 2017 in Rome
Jannis Kounellis, sculptor and installation artist, died little more than a month before his eighty-first birthday. He was one of Greece’s most internationally acclaimed artists, yet he left his home country in 1956 to study art in Rome. After fairly conventional beginnings as a painter, he turned to making installations and sculptures from everyday substances, like his friend Joseph Beuys. Employing such ‘poor’ materials as co...
