Kounellis’s No to Italics: Arte Povera, Annigoni and the Conflict over the Narrative of Italian Art

Jannis Kounellis was born in Piraeus in 1936 and moved to Rome in 1956. A central figure in Arte Povera, he developed an artistic practice based on everyday materials and on the relationship between the work, space and actual presence.

Pietro Annigoni was born in Milan in 1910 and trained in Florence. He remained committed to figurative painting and became internationally known primarily as a portrait painter, in part through his portrait of Elizabeth II.

Two careers that could scarcely be aligned, then, which in 2008 were included in the same curatorial reconstruction.

In September 2008, Palazzo Grassi in Venice presented Italics. Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution 1968–2008, an exhibition curated by Francesco Bonami and devoted to forty years of Italian art.

The project brought together more than a hundred artists and approximately 180 works, juxtaposing artistic practices that art historiography had often placed in separate categories. Annigoni was among the artists included. The sources consulted attest to their joint presence in the exhibition, but do not allow us to state with certainty that the works by Annigoni and Kounellis were intended for the same room.

Bonami’s approach sought to reshuffle established hierarchies and categories. It was precisely this choice that drew objections: for some observers and participants, the plurality of the narrative risked blurring the historical and theoretical differences between widely divergent artistic practices.

Significant withdrawals emerged before the opening. A review published by Frieze reported that Kounellis had refused to participate because he believed Italics presented a distorted image of Arte Povera. The same source also reported that Fausto Melotti’s heirs had declined to lend works. This is the most clearly documented core of the controversy.

L’Espresso described the affair as a “mystery”: according to that account, Kounellis’s work was first withdrawn, then reconsidered through the mediation of a gallery, and ultimately excluded from the exhibition. The sequence documents a conflict between the curatorial approach and the artist’s wishes, without definitively clarifying all the reasons behind it.

Some critical accounts have also linked the controversy to Annigoni’s inclusion and, more generally, to the juxtaposition of Arte Povera and traditional figurative painting. In the materials examined, however, no primary statement by Kounellis identifies Annigoni as the sole reason for his refusal. It is therefore more prudent to regard Annigoni as one of the symbols of dissent over the narrative proposed by Italics, rather than as a conclusively proven, exclusive reason.

The refusal can be interpreted as a defence of the context in which the work is presented. In Kounellis’s practice, materials and exhibition space indeed contribute to the construction of meaning. From this perspective, inclusion in a curatorial narrative with which he disagreed could have appeared to the artist as a transformation of the meaning of his own work. This is, however, a critical reading consistent with his practice, rather than a reason explicitly attested in the sources cited here.

The case raises a broader question: how much autonomy does a curator have in constructing a history of art, and how much room does the artist have to withdraw from that reading? Bonami advocated a narrative that crossed the boundaries of Italian art; the refusal attributed to Kounellis indicates, at least in practice, the limit an artist can set against an interpretive context with which they disagree. The tension between these two positions explains why the affair attracted attention.

Reactions to the exhibition were not uniform. In an article dated 3 October 2008, Simona Maggiorelli focused her criticism on the overall approach of Italics, accusing it of revisionism and judging it unable to adequately convey the ruptures in Italian art. This position documents the critical climate surrounding the exhibition, but does not constitute direct evidence of Kounellis’s personal reasons.

From this perspective, Annigoni matters above all for what he could represent within the exhibition: the possibility of bringing very different artistic languages and genealogies together under a single framework. Whether this operation produced a fruitful dialogue or flattened the differences remains a matter of interpretation, rather than a fact demonstrable solely through reports of the controversy.

Annigoni died in Florence in 1988; Kounellis died in Rome in 2017. Their juxtaposition within the framework of Italics, rather than a documented physical encounter in a room, remains an episode that helps us understand the tensions between figurative tradition, the avant-garde and the curatorial construction of the history of Italian art.

There is no need to add phone calls or dramatic remarks. The verifiable fact is already significant: Kounellis did not participate in a high-profile exhibition because he disputed the way it represented Arte Povera. It is possible to interpret that refusal as an artistic gesture, provided it is presented as a reading rather than as an established fact.

Above all, the affair shows that absence, too, can become part of the debate over the meaning and reception of a work.