╳ Lucio Fontana

 ╳ Lucio Fontana (1899 – 1968) can be considered one of the most important artists in the history of Italian contemporary art: a revolutionary master who proved, throughout his entire career, great aesthetic sophistication marked by the concept of space. Fontana is recognised as the founder of ‘Spatialism’, which is neither a theory nor ‘poetics of space,’ but a clear assertion that anything done consciously entails ‘making’ space. As a painter he tried to ‘destroy’ painting by spreading out colour on the surface and violating it with one or more cuts. These gestures put the ‘external’ space in communication with the ‘internal’ thus re-establishing continuity between spaces on either side of the canvas.

╳ Born in Argentina of Italian parents, he spent the first years of his life in Italy and returned home in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor along with his father, and then on his own. In 1927 he returned to Italy and studied under the sculptor Adolfo Wildt, where he presented his first exhibition in 1930. During the following decade he journeyed Italy and France, working with abstract and expressionist painters and in 1935 he joined the association ‘Abstraction-Création’ in Paris where he created expressionist sculptures in ceramic and bronze. 

╳ In 1940 he returned, once again, to Argentina and founded the ‘Altamira ‘ Academy together with some of his students, and made public the White Manifesto, which stated that "Matter, colour and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art". From 1949 onwards Fontana started the so-called ‘Spatial Concept’ or ‘slash series’ consisting of ‘holes’ or ‘slashes’ on the surface of monochrome paintings, creating what he named "an art for the Space Age". In 1948 Fontana experimented with the use of neon lighting with ‘Ambiente spaziale a luce nera’ (Galleria del Naviglio, Milan). He then created an elaborate neon ceiling called "Luce spaziale" in 1951 for the Triennale in Milan, and in 1959 he exhibited cut-off paintings with multiple combinable elements (he named the sets quanta).

╳ The early 1960s saw Fontana combining his pictorial devices with areas of paint, often mixed with sand and applied in thick layers, these were often scored and incised. During this period there were numerous one-man and group shows, including regular participation in the Venice Biennale, Documenta 4 in Kassel (1968) and the touring exhibition mounted by the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1966-68). Fontana's career closed with 'La fine di dio', an impressive series of works that exerted an enormous influence on the younger generation of artists in the 1960s.

╳ Fontana went beyond the traditional distinctions between painting and sculpture, where space stopped being an object of representation according to conventional standards of perspective. The canvas surface came into direct relation with real space and light; and his monochrome canvases bear the precise marks and secure gestures of an author who, letting go of his brushes, used razor blades.

╳ Lucio Fontana died in Varese on 7 September 1968.

╳ Images (top to bottom)

╳ The artist

╳ Concetto Spaziale Attese
‘Idropittura’ (water colour) on canvas
62* 51cm

╳ Concetto Spaziale, 1962
Lacerations and scratches in copper, three panels
234* 94cm

╳ Concetto Spaziale, 1961
Oil and coloured glass stones on canvas
45.5* 37.5cm

╳ Concetto Spaziale, 1947
Painted terracotta
44* 44cm

╳ Concetto Spaziale, 1965
Mixed media on cardboard
35* 25cm