Jannis Kounellis was born on March 23, 1936 in Piraeus, Greece. He studied in art college in Athens until 1956 and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.

In 1963, the artist introduced found objects in his paintings, among them live animals but also fire, earth, burlap sacks, gold. He replaced the canvas with bed frames, doorways, windows or simply the gallery itself. In 1967, Kounellis joined the Arte Povera movement of Germano Celant. In 1969, he exhibited real horses in the galleria l’Attico. Gradually, Kounellis introduced new materials in his installations (propane torches, smoke, coal, meat, ground coffee, lead, found wooden objects, etc.). The gallery environment was replaced with historical (mostly industrial) sites.

October 2009 finds many Kounellis' works presented in various sections of Tate Modern Gallery in London, UK. On the 5th floor, there is a room dedicated to his work. Jonathan Jones of the Guardian newspaper notes : "dry-stone walling, sacks of grain and rice, and a painting that includes part of the score of St John Passion by JS Bach bring a sense of real life, organic and ancient, into the museum. Like the Kiefer installation, this is another of the Artist Rooms acquired from the collection of Anthony d'Offay." On the 3rd floor, one of his works is matched with that of an Italian artist of the same artistic movement.

Adrian Searle (born 1951) is the chief art critic of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter. He curates art shows and also writes fiction.

He taught at Central St Martins College of Art (1981–94), Chelsea College of Art (1991-6) and Goldsmiths College (1994-6). He has curated shows, such as Unbound: Possibilities in Painting (1994), an international exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. In 2003, he co-curated a Pepe Espaliu retrospective at Reina Sofia, Madrid, and curated Glad That Things Don't Talk at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

He was a painter and exhibited widely, but stopped when he took up his newspaper job. He said, "I was always torn between making art and writing. Writing won." He also writes fiction.

Before joining The Guardian, he wrote for The Independent, Time Out and contributed regularly to Artscribe magazine (1976–92). He now also writes for Frieze art magazine.

On 19 July 2011, Searle received an Honorary degree for Doctor of Art from Nottingham Trent University.

Germano Celant (b. Genoa, 1940) is an Italian art historian, critic and curator, who coined the term "Arte Povera" (poor art) in 1967 and wrote many articles and books on the subject.

Celant attended the University of Genoa, where he studied history of art with Eugenio Battisti. In 1967, his manifesto of Arte Povera, Notes for a Guerilla, was published in Flash Art. The concept of Arte Povera seemed to be that in Italy art was quite different from the America due to the different circumstances at the time. Italy was going through an industrial period but was not really making the pop art that coincided with the established economy as opposed to American artists like Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and other pop artists. The Italian artists were going for a neo-humanism in their art and not for the coolness and calculated machine-made imagery of the pop artists.

"Arte Povera" was essentially formed around two nucleus: one in Turin, with artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Giulio Paolini, Giovanni Anselmo, and Piero Gilardi; and one in Rome, with Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis and Pino Pascali. Celant went on to organize Arte Povera exhibitions at Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa (1967), Galleria De' Foscherari in Bologna (1968), and a three-day performance event called "Arte Povera & Azioni Povere at Amalfi" (1968).