For the last 50 years, Opalka, Kounellis and Kabakov have influenced the paradigms, referential strata and narrations of artistic thought as too the forms, contexts and materials employed in artistic expression. This essay looks at and analyses what these three masters have in common – time as a key metaphor in the meaning of the artwork and the attempt to develop over time a perceptive process seen as an intellectual, emotional and, indeed, cathartic experience.