“avant-garde artists deeply related to the great Western tradition”

Both Kounellis and Morandi are deeply related to the great Western tradition of an art founded on the metamorphosis of matter and symbolic condensation into a form responsible to its own linguistic order. They find their model in the classicism of the Greek world and in its renewal through the passion of the Italian Quattrocento, although they are also avant-garde artists in whose work the form goes through a continuous experimentation.

The poetic of Morandi is founded in the metaphysical capacity of art, and specifically of painting: to explore the nature of things, to represent both their fleetingness and durability. A similar aspect is pursued in Kounellis’s installations which aim to capture the interweaving of space and time.

Text by Achille Bonito Oliva. Released by Sprovieri Gallery to coincide with the exhibition at the gallery held in Spring 2001.