Four rooms comprising 16 works: three important early works dating between 1960 and 1971; three more recent large-scale installations, two wall-hung multi-media works, and eight multiples dating from c.1989-1991 and 2001-2005.

Born in Piraeus in Greece, living and working in Rome since 1956, Jannis Kounellis was a seminal contributor to the radically and internationally influential Arte Povera group and he continues to inspire young artists today. Often epic in scale, Kounellis’ work possesses a grandeur that reflects his frequent choice of themes and ideas from the past and emphasises the fragmentary relationship the past has with the present.

The works in The d’Offay Donation span Kounellis’ career and represent the rich diversity of this important artist’s work. The group includes a rare and important early painting of 1960 from the series in which the artist drew freehand the basic elements of written communication, letters, numbers and arrows to make paintings and drawings on paper or thin canvas, and then filled in with black enamel paint. In the poetic Untitled, 1971, Kounellis painted an extract from the score of Bach’s St John Passion on a dark green canvas and had a cellist playing music from the oratorio in front of it on the occasion of its first exhibition.

The Donation also includes Kounellis’ well-known Arte Povera work Untitled, 1969 with sacks containing lentils, rice, peas, corn, beans, potatoes and coffee. Kounellis is known for his combinations of antithetical materials such as sacking, beans, cotton, metal and wool. The multiples, conceived of as small contained sculptures produced in editions, draw together his most significant media and offer an excellent introduction to his work.