In 1976, Jannis Kounellis installed a furnace with a chimney inside a gallery space. Above the cold, extinguished chimney, a greasy smudge of smoke stained the ceiling — a melancholy trace of a fire that had gone out. Two years later, he returned to this evocative scene in a drawing rendered in pencil and charcoal on paper, once again depicting a smoking chimney within an interior setting.

Fire and its remnants have long held symbolic weight in Arte Povera, particularly as emblems of transformation. In Kounellis's work, they function not only as physical materials but also as carriers of deeper meaning — poised between poetic resonance and a transcendental, even mythic, intensity. The chimney, in particular, serves as a powerful allegory: of industry, of progress, and simultaneously, of disappearance. The smoke stain becomes a modern memento mori, a haunting trace of energy expended, of life extinguished.