Almost three years have passed since the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation organised the first retrospective exhibition of work by Jannis Kounellis in Greece. In effect, that exhibition marked the start of the Foundation's ambitious programme of important visual arts exhibitions. It was held on the cargo vessel Ionion in the harbour of Piraeus, where Jannis Kounellis was born, and ultimately proved to be one of the most distinctive and widely discussed landmarks in his artistic career.
During the process of preparing this difficult exhibition, the cargo vessel Ionion emerged as the leading player in the whole undertaking. None of us who worked on the exhibition in that unusual venue will ever forget the problems, and the pleasures, of what was a unique experience. It is as a testimony to those moments that this book has been published; it stands as a document to the entire process of creation. The photographs of Manolis Babousis record highlights and locations, giving a masterly picture both of the intensity of the preparations and of the poetic dimension in the work of Jannis Kounellis.
The purpose of the book is to extend the Greek visual arts bibliography and to serve as a smaller, more immediate and more accessible supplement to Kounellis-Mistral, the book with photographs by A. Amendola which was recently published by Bolis Editions and Alpha Credit Bank on the occasion of the same exhibition. We believe that it will enable us to keep alive our memories of the exhibition itself and of the process of creating an event which revealed all the artistic, compositional and spatial design talents of an artist whose work has already left its mark on the current century.
Our thanks, first and foremost, to Jannis Kounellis. However, it would be an oversight if we were to fail also to thank Christos Ioakeimidis, valuable consultant and curator of the exhibition, Michele Coudray, Marina Iliadi, Jean Bernier, Maria Panagidou, and all those who kindly lent works, for their contribution to the exhibition, and Marco Gherardi and Thomas McEvilley for contributing to the catalogue. Our cordial thanks to the Piraeus Port Organisation (more specifically, to Georgios Prasianakis, then its President, and Spyros Stalias, its General Director), to Piraeus Harbourmaster's Office, to the Municipality of Pireaus, and to Alpha Credit Bank for their unstinting support over the practical aspects of the exhibition. We are grateful to Gavrilos Michalis, Angelis Pitsikalis, Americo Miglioratti, Damiano Urbani, Stelios Bergeles & Co., Captain Georgios Karnachoritis, and all the crew for their technical assistance and support of the exhibition. We would also like to thank the Ministry of Culture, the Hellenic Cinema Centre, Stavros Petsopoulos, Aristidis Kamaras and all the others who contributed, in whatever way, to making possible the exhibition and this book.