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Lucio Fontana (; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. He is mostly known as the founder of
Spatialism Spatialism ( it, Spazialismo) is an art movement founded by Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana in Milan in 1947 in which he proposed to synthesize colour, sound, space, movement, and time into a new type of art. The main ideas of the movement ...
.


Early life

Born in
Rosario Rosario () is the largest city in the central Argentine province of Santa Fe. The city is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the west bank of the Paraná River. Rosario is the third-most populous city in the country, and is also the most p ...
, to Italian immigrant parents, he was the son of the sculptor
Luigi Fontana Luigi Fontana (9 February 1827 – 27 December 1908) was an Italians, Italian sculptor, painter and architect. Biography He was born at Monte San Pietrangeli in the Marche. He first began training between 1838 and 1841 at Macerata under Gaetano ...
(1865—1946). Fontana spent the first years of his life in Argentina and then was sent to Italy in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor with his father, and then on his own. Already in 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of young Argentine artists working in Rosario de Santa Fé."Press Release: Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York opens at Guggenheim Museum" Guggenheim Museum, New York.


Work

In 1927 Fontana returned to Italy and studied alongside Fausto Melotti under the sculptor Adolfo Wildt, at
Accademia di Brera The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera ("academy of fine arts of Brera"), also known as the or Brera Academy, is a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Milan, Italy. It shares its history, and its main building, with the Pinacoteca ...
from 1928 to 1930. It was there he presented his first exhibition in 1930, organized by the
Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...
art gallery ''Il Milione''. During the following decade he journeyed in Italy and
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, working with abstract and
expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...
painters. In 1935 he joined the association Abstraction-Création in Paris and from 1936 to 1949 made expressionist sculptures in ceramic and bronze. In 1939, he joined the Corrente, a Milan group of expressionist artists. In 1940 he returned to Argentina. In
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
(1946) he founded the Altamira academy together with some of his students, and made public the ''White Manifesto'', where it is stated that "Matter, colour and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art". In the text, which Fontana did not sign but to which he actively contributed, he began to formulate the theories that he was to expand as ''Spazialismo'', or Spatialism, in five manifestos from 1947 to 1952. Upon his return from Argentina in 1947, he supported, along with writers and philosophers, the first manifesto of spatialism (Spazialismo)**. Fontana had found his studio and works completely destroyed in the Allied bombings of Milan,Lucio Fontana: Ambienti Spaziali, May 3 - June 30, 2012
Gagosian Gallery, New York.
but soon resumed his ceramics works in
Albisola Albisola Superiore ( Genoese: ) is a '' comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Savona in the Italian region Liguria, located about southwest of Genoa and about northeast of Savona. Main sights *Medieval castle *Sanctuary of ''Madonna della ...
. In Milan, he collaborated with noted Milanese architects to decorate several new buildings that were part of the effort to reconstruct the city after the war. Following his return to Italy in 1948 Fontana exhibited his first ''Ambiente spaziale a luce nera'' ('Spatial environment') (1949) at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan, a temporary installation consisting of a giant amoeba-like shape suspended in the void in a darkened room and lit by neon light. From 1949 on he started the so-called Spatial Concept or slash series, consisting in holes or slashes on the surface of
monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochr ...
paintings, drawing a sign of what he named "an art for the Space Age". He devised the generic title ''Concetto spaziale'' ('spatial concept') for these works and used it for almost all his later paintings. These can be divided into broad categories: the ''Buchi'' ('holes), beginning in 1949, and the ''Tagli'' ('slashes'), which he instituted in the mid-1950s.Renato Barilli
Lucio Fontana
MoMA Collection, New York.
Fontana often lined the reverse of his canvases with black gauze so that the darkness would shimmer behind the open cuts and create a mysterious sense of illusion and depth. He then created an elaborate neon ceiling called "Luce spaziale" in 1951 for the Triennale in Milan. In his important series of ''Concetto spaziale, La Fine di Dio'' (1963–64), Fontana uses the egg shape. With his ''Pietre (stones)'' series, begun in 1952, Fontana fused the sculptural with painting by encrusting the surfaces of his canvases with heavy impasto and colored glass. In his ''Buchi (holes)'' cycle, begun in 1949–50, he punctured the surface of his canvases, breaking the membrane of two-dimensionality in order to highlight the space behind the picture.Lucio Fontana, ''Concetto spaziale, Attese'' (1959)
Guggenheim Collection.
From 1958 he purified his paintings by creating matte, monochrome surfaces, thus focusing the viewer's attention on the slices that rend the skin of the canvas. In 1959 Fontana exhibited cut-off paintings with multiple combinable elements (he named the sets ''quanta''), and began ''Nature'', a series of sculptures made by cutting a gash across a sphere of terracotta clay, which he subsequently cast in bronze. Fontana engaged in many collaborative projects with the most important architects of the day, in particular with Luciano Baldessari, who shared and supported his research for ''Spatial Light – Structure in Neon'' (1951) at the 9th Triennale and, among other things, commissioned him to design the ceiling of the cinema in the Sidercomit Pavilion at the 21st Milan Fair in 1953. Around 1960, Fontana began to reinvent the cuts and punctures that had characterized his highly personal style up to that point, covering canvases with layers of thick oil paint applied by hand and brush and using a scalpel or Stanley knife to create great fissures in their surface. In 1961, following an invitation to participate along with artists
Jean Dubuffet Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a ...
, Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, and others in an exhibition of contemporary painting entitled "Art and Contemplation", held at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, he created a series of 22 works dedicated to the lagoon city. He manipulated the paint with his fingers and various instruments to make furrows, sometimes including scattered fragments of
Murano glass Venetian glass () is glassware made in Venice, typically on the island of Murano near the city. Traditionally it is made with a soda–lime "metal" and is typically elaborately decorated, with various "hot" glass-forming techniques, as well a ...
. Fontana was subsequently invited by Michel Tapié to exhibit the works at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. As a consequence of his first visit to New York in 1961, he created a series of metal works, done between 1961 and 1965. The works consisted of large sheets of shiny and scratched copper, pierced and gouged, cut through by dramatic vertical gestures that recall the force of New York construction and the metal and glass of the buildings. Among Fontana's last works are a series of ''Teatrini'' (‘little theatres’), in which he returned to an essentially flat idiom by using backcloths enclosed within wings resembling a frame; the reference to theatre emphasizes the act of looking, while in the foreground a series of irregular spheres or oscillating, wavy silhouettes creates a lively shadow play. Another work from that time, ''Trinità (Trinity)'' (1966), consists of three large white canvases punctuated by lines of holes, embraced in a theatrical setting made from ultramarine plastic sheets vaguely resembling wings. In the last years of his career, Fontana became increasingly interested in the staging of his work in the many exhibitions that honored him worldwide, as well as in the idea of purity achieved in his last white canvases. These concerns were prominent at the 1966 Venice Biennale, for which he designed the environment for his work. At Documenta IV in Kassel in 1968, he positioned a large, plaster slash as the centre of a totally white labyrinth, including ceiling and floor (''Ambiente spaziale bianco''). Shortly before his death he was present at the "Destruction Art, Destroy to Create" demonstration at the Finch College Museum of New York. Then he left his home in Milano and went to
Comabbio Comabbio is a '' comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Varese in the Italian region Lombardy, located about northwest of Milan and about southwest of Varese. On 31 December 2004, it had a population of 1,025 and an area of .All demographics ...
(in the province of
Varese Varese ( , , or ; lmo, label=Varesino, Varés ; la, Baretium; archaic german: Väris) is a city and ''comune'' in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, north-west of Milan. The population of Varese in 2018 has reached 80,559. It is the ca ...
, Italy), his family's mother town, where he died in 1968. Fontana created a prolific amount of graphic work with abstract motifs as well as figures, little-known in the art world, at the same time as he was producing his abstract perforated works. He was also the sculptor of the bust of Ovidio Lagos, founder of the '' La Capital'' newspaper, in Carrara
marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphose ...
.


Exhibitions

Fontana had his first solo exhibitions at Galleria del Milione, Milan, in 1931. In 1961, Michel Tapié organized his first show in the U.S., an exhibition of the Venice series, at the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York. His first solo exhibition at an American museum was held at the
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
, Minneapolis, in 1966. He participated in the Bienal de São Paulo and in numerous exhibitions around the world. Among others, major retrospectives have been organized by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2006),
Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the R ...
, London (1999), Fondazione Lucio Fontana (1999), and the
Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
(1987; traveled to La Fundación 'la Caixa' Barcelona;
Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
, Amsterdam; Whitechapel Gallery, London). Since 1930 Fontana's work had been exhibited regularly at the
Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
, and he represented Argentina various times; he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale of 1966. In 2014, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris dedicates a retrospective to the artist. Tornabuoni art held a parallel show in its Avenue Matignon Paris gallery space. The first major American retrospective since the artist's death came in 2019 at the
Met Breuer The Met Breuer ( ) was a museum of modern and contemporary art at Madison Avenue and East 75th Street in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It served as a branch museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (known as the Met) from 20 ...
.


Collections

Fontana's works can be found in the permanent collections of more than one hundred museums around the world. In particular, examples from the ''Pietre'' series are housed in the
Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
, Amsterdam, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...
in New York, the
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna The ("national gallery of modern and contemporary art"), also known as La Galleria Nazionale, is an art gallery in Rome, Italy. It was founded in 1883 on the initiative of the then Minister Guido Baccelli and is dedicated to modern and contempora ...
in Rome, the Museum of Contemporary Art Villa Croce in Genoa and the van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Fontana's jewelry is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.


Art market

Italian scholar
Enrico Crispolti Enrico Crispolti (18 April 1933 – 8 December 2018) was an Italian art critic, curator and art historian. From 1984 to 2005, he was professor of history of contemporary art at the Università degli Studi di Siena, and director of the school of s ...
edited a two-volume catalogue raisonné of Fontana's paintings, sculptures and environments in 2006. In 2013, Luca Massimo Barbero, Nina Ardemagni Laurini and Silvia Ardemagni published a three-volume catalogue raisonné of Fontana's works on paper, including more than 5,500 works in chronological order. A rare, large crimson work with a single slash, which Fontana dedicated to his wife and which has always been known as the ''Teresita'', fetched £6.7 million ($11.6 million) at
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémi ...
London in 2008, then an auction record for the artist. Fontana's ''Concetto Spaziale, Attese'' (1965), from the collection of Anna-Stina Malmborg Hoglund and Gunnar Hoglund set a new record for a slash painting at £8.4 million at
Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
London in 2015. Even more popular are Fontana's oval canvases.
Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
sold a work titled ''Concetto spaziale, la fine di dio'' (1963) for £10.32 million in 2008. Part of Fontana's Venice circle, ''Festival on the Grand Canal'' was sold at
Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémi ...
in New York for $7 million in 2008. Marion Maneker (February 3, 2009)
"Anatomy of a Rediscovered Fontana"
''Art Market Monitor''. Note: Sale price ''estimate'' ("£5 and £7 million") only. Retrieved 2020-05-05.


Auction Record

In Nov 2015, Christie's set an auction record for the artist's work ''Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio'', 1964, sold for $29million.


Further reading

* White, Anthony. ''Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch'', MIT Press. *Mansoor, Jaleh (2016). ''Marshall Plan Modernism: Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginnings of Autonomia.'' Duke University Press * Whitfield, S., ''Fontana'', L. and Gallery, H., 1999. Fontana. Univ of California Press. * Gottschaller, P., 2012. ''Lucio Fontana: the artist's materials.'' Getty Publications. * Orford, Emily-Jane Hills. (2008). ''The Creative Spirit: Stories of 20th Century Artists''. Ottawa: Baico Publishing. .


See also

* Michel Tapié * Ferruccio Bortoluzzi


Notes


References

* This article draws from the corresponding article in the Spanish Wikipedia.


External links


Fondazione Lucio Fontana
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fontana, Lucio 20th-century Argentine painters Argentine male painters 20th-century Argentine sculptors Male sculptors 20th-century Italian painters Italian contemporary artists Italian male painters Argentine expatriates in Italy Argentine people of Italian descent Art Informel and Tachisme painters Artists from Rosario, Santa Fe Argentine artists 1899 births 1968 deaths Brera Academy alumni 20th-century Italian male artists 20th-century Argentine male artists