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.

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.

Arte Povera was never an art simply to look at, but to experience with every sense, and this richly illustrated retrospective exemplifies the ways in which the Italian movement went beyond a Minimalist preoccupation with the visual apprehension of form and process as Jannis Kounellis is one of the most highly esteemed exponents of the movement. This monograph offers a rare opportunity to fully experience the confrontation of Kounellis's bold works as they were intended.

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 1969, Greek-born Jannis Kounellis famously exhibited 11 live horses at Rome's Galleria l'Attico. Kounellis, who has been living in Rome since the beginning of his career, is a pioneer of the Arte Povera movement, which originated in Italy in the mid-60s and is characterized by antiestablishment media (like street theater) and antielitist materials (like rope, rocks and discarded metal). Kounellis preferred dirt, fire, gold, burlap sacks, smoke and coffee grounds--to name a few of the substances that gradually appeared in his sculptures and installations. In 2002, Kounellis created his masterwork, "Labyrinth," a monumental installation composed of 143 eight-foot-tall vertical iron panels surrounded by a layer of coal. Viewers can walk through to encounter traces of Kounellis' past pieces: burlap sacks, an iron cot, coffee grounds. Like a trip through "Labyrinth," this comprehensive monograph contributes richly to the understanding of Kounellis' influential 40-year career.

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.

The year 2018 marked the fiftieth anniversary of May ’68, a startling, by now almost mythic event which combined seriousness, courage, humor and theatrics. The contributions of this volume—based on papers presented the conference Does “la lutte continue”? The Global Afterlife of May ’68 at Florida State University in March 2019—explore the ramifications of that springtime protest in the contemporary world. What has widely become known as the movement of ‘68 consisted, in fact, of many synchronous movements in different nations that promoted a great variety of political, social, and cultural agendas. While it is impossible to write a global history of ’68, this volume presents a kaleidoscope of different perceptions, reflections, and receptions of protest in France, Italy, and other nations that share in common a global utopian imaginary as expressed, for example, in the slogan: “All power to the imagination!” The contributions of this collection show that, while all social struggles are political, many lasting changes in individual mentalities and social structures originated from utopian ideas that were realized first in artistic productions and their aesthetic reception. In this respect the various protests of May ’68 continue.

Framed in a lucid discussion of the intellectual issues surrounding the postmodern movement, the essays in this book re-examine the course of twentieth-century art through the work of twenty-five major sculptors. McEvilley masterfully traces the evolution of modern sculpture from the readymades of Marcel Duchamp to the anti-painting statements of the 1960s to the spiritualism and conceptualism of the 1980s and 1990s. This is a groundbreaking work in the field of art criticism and a fundamental text for anyone interested in the history of current art and culture. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.