Over the past 40 years, sculptor and installation artist Jannis Kounellis has established himself as a unique presence in the world of contemporary art. His work, whether included in temporary exhibitions or placed in semi-permanent installations, invariably lingers in the memory because of its forceful character and its ability to transform its immediate environment. Stephen Bann refers to Kounellis's working practice as a process of "making strange". In all his installations, the material impact of the work sets off a trail of associations. Potent examples include his 1969 installation of twelve tethered live horses in a gallery in Rome, the city where the prototypes of the equestrian monuments of Antiquity can still be seen, or his 1975 Civil Tragedy installation in which a hat-stand with black hat and coat against a gold-leaf background lit by a small lamp recalled the café society of Central Europe against a wall of Byzantine splendor. As an artist, Kounellis has found his special location in Rome. At the age of 20, he made the journey there from Piraeus, the ancient port of Athens, and began his career. His works continue to bear the hallmarks of his Eastern Mediterranean origin, as well as testifying to his concern with the links between Russian Modernism and the Byzantine tradition. Stephen Bann has not set out to write a conventional monograph about the artist. Rather, he looks at the underlying mechanisms in Kounellis's practice, suggesting the ways in which they are important in the broader context of late modernist art. He outlines the distinctive way in which Kounellis takes account of space as a necessary preliminary to working within it, and discusses the historical and cultural dimension to which Kounellis lays claim.

KEYNOTE: This book presents the definitive retrospective of the avant-garde European artist Jannis Kounellis' work as seen within its spatial context. Born in Greece in 1936, Jannis Kounellis witnessed some of the most tumultuous periods in Modern art and radically impacted the art scene since the 1960s. Based in Rome since 1956, he began working on canvas, but after his "Alphabet" paintings Kounellis abandoned the two-dimensional surface. He became a central figure of the Arte Povera movement, developing a vocabulary of modest materials such as coal, wool, and coffee, and even incorporated living animals like parrots and horses into his art. Kounellis' work took on a spatial dimension with his poetic installations reflecting industrial and agrarian societies, as well as moral and social concerns. This riveting monograph includes an in-depth and richly illustrated survey of 22 projects in factories, warehouses, churches and castles all over the world, including Rome, Chicago, Barcelona, Cologne, Mexico City, Berlin, and London. Each location represents a unique event where Kounellis' work and the architectural environment merge to create a dialogue between the artist and the space. The book offers readers a unique opportunity to observe the evolution of Kounellis' work as the artist explored increasingly unconventional--and often controversial--methods for delivering his social and political messages. AUTHOR: Marc Scheps has been Director of the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, and the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation. He is the author of many publications on Modern and Contemporary art. ILLUSTRATIONS 400 duotone illustrations *

In the Greek port of Piraeus, there is a small tramp steamer moored at the dock. The Ionion's cargo decks are laden with the works of the Italian artist Jannis Kounellis, born in Piraeus in 1936. The ship, and its manifest, are a metaphor for the high priest of Arte Povera, the art movement founded in Italy in the late 1960s.

Recorded and transcribed throughout the 1960s, Carla Lonzi's Self-portrait ruptures the linear tradition of art-historical writing. Lonzi first abolishes the role of the critic, her own, seeking change over self-preservation by theorising against the act of theorising. This is the voice of feminist experimentalism in Italian art and literature, and here Lonzi speaks for herself in English. Self-portrait montages her verbatim conversations with fourteen prominent artists working at the time, all men except one. Lonzi's vital feeling that it was impossible to respond professionally to the political and existential problems embedded in the production and distribution of artworks drives the book's contingent structure. Artmaking struck Lonzi as the invitation to be together in a humanly satisfying way. This first English translation brings Lonzi's final work of criticism before her break with 'art' to an international audience. Her uncompromising enactment and pragmatic drop-out discontinues the narration of postwar modern art in Italy and beyond.

A 20-year survey of Christiane Löhr's delicate sculptures made from organic materials German sculptor and installation artist Christiane Löhr (born 1965) creates fragile, nearly ephemeral sculptures using only natural materials, such as plant stems, blossoms, seeds and horse hair. This volume gathers work from the last 20 years alongside essays on the artist.

Edited by one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, Arte Povera is the most complete overview of this movement ever published.