“La stanza vede. Disegni 1973-1990”

The Museo Novecento from March 15 to June 9 is hosting the exhibition “La stanza vede. Disegni 1973-1990” (The Room Sees. Drawings 1973-1990) dedicated to the drawings of Jannis Kounellis, the master of Arte Povera, best known for his large-scale installations.

On display are a hundred drawings executed between 1973 and the 1980s, on paper, mostly in India ink, pencil, charcoal. A tribute that the city of Florence dedicates to Kounellis just a few years after his death (2017), giving us an unprecedented gateway to his fantastic and poetic world, dreams and nightmares, imagination, his figurative archetypes and his most recurrent iconographies, between archaic memories and modern images, new and mysterious allegories. 

Some drawings represent the first intuition of future monumental installations, real first design tests, others are lightning-fast sketches of iconic works that have marked the history of contemporary art, still others are notes of concepts on which Kounellis liked to reflect, or extemporaneous annotations as a memory exercise to recall dreams or fantasies.

The exhibition is therefore a unique opportunity to peek into the mind of the great artist and observe the birth of a work of art.