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Jannis Kounellis, ‘Untitled’, Lot 36
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 2 October 2019
Provenance
Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, Milan
Private Collection, London
Exhibited
Chicago, Donald Young Gallery, New Work. Kounellis, March 1989
Literature
Alan G. Artner, 'Elusive genius', Chicago Tribune, 16 March 1989, p. 9 (illustrated)
Mary Sherman, 'Greek artist Kounellis crafts baroque set of environments', Chicago Sun-Times, 24 March 1989, p. 19 (illustrated)
Germano Celant, ed., Jannis Kounellis, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada Venezia, Venice, 2019, p. 124
Catalogue Essay
One of the foremost innovators of his time, Jannis Kounellis bent the conventions of traditional media through an ingenious use of impoverished, raw materials. Comprising two sheets of iron and three lead protrusions folded inwards, with handfuls of coal placed within them, Untitled, 1989, is archetypal of the artist’s later oeuvre, which built on the body of works he had developed throughout the 1960s and constituted the basis of his radical gesture. Coinciding with his growing critical and institutional acclaim in the 1980s, partly defined by his first ever retrospective which took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in 1986, Untitled was created the same year as the artist’s inclusion in the 43rd Venice Biennale – the seventh out of nine contributions throughout his career – and was exhibited at his important solo show at the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago that same year. Currently the subject of a seminal retrospective at the Fondazione Prada, Venice, bringing together more than 60 works executed between 1959 and 2015, Kounellis has once again been placed at the forefront of the art world’s collective consciousness, his visionary approach being celebrated as an inspiration and springboard for a number of contemporaneous artistic and conceptual manifestations.

With a practice spanning over sixty years, Kounellis is often referred to as one of the forefathers and cornerstone figures of Arte Povera. The artistic movement, emphasising everyday, ‘poor’ materials, and boasting ‘the sanctity of everyday objects’, counted a number of Italian artists whose practice similarly explored the limits of traditional media, and summoned aesthetics of waste through the use of decaying or time-sensitive materials (Jannis Kounellis, quoted in Andrew Russeth, ‘Jannis Kounellis Dies at 80’, ARTnews, 17 February 2017, online). Layered in textural, compositional and thematic complexity, Arte Povera productions reflected not just a radical development from traditional painterly craft, but also the reflection of a bruised world whose most essential social parameters transformed following the war. War had left a fundamental, and dual, imprint on Kounellis from a young age as, for the first twenty years of his life, he grew up in Piraeus, a primal port town near Athens which endured the Second World War only to observe the developments of its own Civil War immediately after.

In 1956, Kounellis left his homeland to settle in Rome, and would not return to Greece, or indeed speak his mother tongue, for over two decades. On a par with other Arte Povera protagonists, he would use raw, industrial, or organic materials to render his cross-genre structures; as a result, the uncannily raw dimensions of his work bring to mind those employed by artists such as Alberto Burri or Salvatore Scarpitta, whose perceptions of war also deeply influenced their practice. Having had his first solo show in 1960 at Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome, Kounellis’ inventive creations became increasingly radical in 1967, when he began embracing concrete elements such as soil, wool, coal, cotton and fire, as well as motifs of gravity and equilibrium. It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s, however, that he developed a deeper dialogue with architectural and urban spaces, and created wall-based sculptures that comprised his signature combination of industrial materials and specific measurements. ‘I do use metal sheets but I adapt them to a particular format – 2 x 1,80 meters – which more or less corresponds to the surface area of a double bed’, the artist declared. ‘That is a universal dimension, like the height of a table, the width of the door […] and the bed, the door, the table are disciplined by human need. I am interested in working with such measurements’ (Jannis Kounellis, quoted in Jannis Kounellis, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada Venezia, Milan, 2019, n.p.). The present work, standing halfway between a painting and a sculpture, aptly exemplifies this approach: with its three lead and coal excrescences protruding from a split iron surface, the layered composition becomes enigmatically alluring, projected into a tangible realm that shifts the spectator’s phenomenological perspective.

Kounellis’ break with the planearity of the picture plane and engagement with reality did not just happen on a visual level; it furthermore materialised in the artist’s engagement with other senses. The use of coal in Untitled, sneaked into the folded lead, underlines Kounellis’ synaesthetic approach. Instead of using a traditional black pigment to intensify the metal's presence, the artist employs an organic and haptic residue that posits as the darkest of hues, commanding a desire to touch and smell. ‘His paintings... show several strategies for breaking out a hermetic chamber of pure form and establishing contact with the real world roundabout’, wrote Thomas McEvilley (Thomas McEvilley, ‘Mute Prophecies: The Art of Jannis Kounellis’ in Mary Jane Jacobs, Kounellis, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1987, p. 25). Through eluding traditional tenets of representation, Kounellis upturns the viewer’s classic cognitive instincts, celebrating the materiality of metal and coal.

Property of an Important Italian Collector

36

Jannis Kounellis

Untitled

coal and lead on iron
201.4 x 181.2 x 14 cm (79 1/4 x 71 3/8 x 5 1/2 in.)
Executed in 1989.

Estimate
£150,000 - 200,000 ♠

Sold for £275,000

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Senior Director
Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, Europe
+44 20 7318 4099
othornton@phillips.com

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+44 20 7318 4060
rwiden@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 2 October 2019

1
Simone Leigh
Shower Cap
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000 ‡
Sold for £175,000
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2
Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Over Yonder
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3
Derek Fordjour
Green Horn
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4
Sanya Kantarovsky
Lavender Arrest
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5
Tschabalala Self
Florida
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6
Tomoo Gokita
Caroline
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £181,250
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7
George Condo
Untitled
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
Sold for £471,000
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8
Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Orange and Grass Green Butterfly 45.02)
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000
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9
Mark Bradford
Value 35
Estimate £1,500,000 - 2,000,000 ‡
Sold for £1,935,000
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10
Ed Ruscha
Street Greed
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
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11
Hurvin Anderson
Beaver Lake
Estimate £1,500,000 - 2,000,000 ‡♠
Sold for £2,175,000
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12
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ♠
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13
Luc Tuymans
The Exorcist
Estimate £700,000 - 900,000 ‡♠
Sold for £675,000
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14
Alex Katz
Blue Umbrella I
Estimate £800,000 - 1,200,000 ‡
Sold for £3,375,000
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15
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,035,000
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16
Anish Kapoor
Untitled
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡♠
Sold for £569,000
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17
Jim Hodges
another together
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
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18
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £350,000
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19
Keith Haring
Untitled
Estimate £800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for £975,000
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20
Takashi Murakami
Spiral
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21
Joe Bradley
Big Boy
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22
KAWS
AT THIS TIME
Estimate £800,000 - 1,200,000 ‡
Sold for £1,455,000
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23
Keith Haring
Cruella de Vil
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡
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24
KAWS
UNTITLED
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25
John Baldessari
Intersection Series: Automobile / High Rise Building
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡
Sold for £287,500
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26
Andreas Gursky
Klitschko
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27
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Watertowers
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡♠
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28
Thomas Schütte
Maschine
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29
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ♠
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30
Robert Mangold
A Curved Line and a Diagonal within a Distorted Rectangle (Yellow)
Estimate £300,000 - 400,000
Sold for £423,000
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31
Günther Förg
Untitled
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
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32
Raoul De Keyser
Kabinet
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33
This lot is no longer available.
34
Sherrie Levine
Caribou Skull
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35
Jenny Holzer
Red Yellow Looming
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
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36
Jannis Kounellis
Untitled
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ♠
Sold for £275,000
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37
Alighiero Boetti
Ogni lettera un suono
Estimate £300,000 - 400,000 ♠
Sold for £447,000
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38
Rosemarie Trockel
Assisted Lines
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £225,000
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39
Richard Serra
Elevational Weights, Vertical Mass
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡
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40
Tracey Emin
Nature 1
Estimate £70,000 - 100,000 ♠
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41
Elizabeth Peyton
Evan Recording
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000
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42
Wolfgang Tillmans
Freischwimmer 99
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43
Cory Arcangel
Photoshop CS: 110 by 72 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient "Spectrum," mousedown y=31100 x=1500, mouse up y=32850 x=800
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £325,000
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20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 2 October 2019

Create your first list.

Video

Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

36

Jannis Kounellis

Untitled

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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