Lucio Fontana
Covered by droit de suite
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"Concetto spaziale"
Signed l. Fontana. Executed 1966-68. Perforated holes and incised lines on paper, 59 x 46 cm. A certificate of authenticity executed by Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan is included with the lot.
Provenance
Galerie Leger, Malmö, Sweden, acquired by the present owner around 1970.
More information
Until the 1940s Lucio Fontana lived and worked in Italy and France, but at the start of the Second World War he travelled to Argentina. It was in Buenos Aires at the Academia de Altamira that his ideas of ‘Spazialismo’ were born, the artistic movement that Fontana founded and which came to shape his entire artistic career. In his manifesto from 1946, Manifesto Blanco, he encouraged artists and like-minded people to abandon traditional and academic notions of art and dare to embrace new technologies and science in order to create a fourth dimension.
A significant aspect of what made Fontana so compelling was his ability to merge sculpture and painting. His choice of forms remained varied throughout his career – from geometrical perfection to shapes that were more difficult to define. It wasn’t about the cuts or the holes in themselves, but about the process of getting there. Fontana’s work was a product of its time, independently of his choice of medium or technique.
Fontana had already begun to work with the concept ‘Concetto Spaziale’ in 1947. A few years later he created the series Pietre (‘stones’) where he fused painting and sculpture by applying thick layers of paint on the canvas and then adding a collage of coloured pieces of glass. Shortly thereafter followed a series of works he called Buchi (‘holes’). Here the canvas was punctured and perforated with holes in order to break up its two-dimensional quality and expose the space behind the painting.
Towards the end of the 1950s he began making the Tagli pieces, the cuts that, together with the Buchi, became the forms he continued to work with until his death in 1968. Through his ‘Concetto Spaziale’ Fontana succeeded in erasing the borderlines between painting and sculpture.
The painting in the auction is a ‘Concetto Spaziale’ with a multitude of perforated small holes (buchi) and incised lines. The piece highlights an important phase in Lucio Fontana’s artistic development.
Artist
Up until the 1940s, Lucio Fontana lived and worked in Italy and France, but at the wake of the Second World War he fled to Argentina. In Buenos Aires at the Academia of Altamira, his idea of Spazialismo was born, a artist movement grounded by Fontana which came to define the majority of his career. In his manifesto from 1946, Manifesto Blanco, the artist challenged his peers to steer away from the tranditional and academic elements of art, urging them to include new techniques and darw to create art into the fourth dimension.
A great reasoning behind Fontana's popularity was his ability to combine sculpture and painting. His choice of forms was inconsistent during the entirity of his career, from geometirc perfections to more undefinable forms. It didn't matter so much about the end result, but rather the process it took to get there. Fontana's art was a product of its time, no matter the medium or technique.
Already in 1947, Fontana began working with the concept Concetto Spaziale. A few years later his Pietre series was added where he seemlessly combines sculpture and painting by applying thick layers of paint on a canvas and thereafter adding a collage of colourful glass chips. Not long after that Fontana entered a period with Buchi, where he made holes in the canvas to break up the two dimensionality of the composition in search for the space behind the painting. At the end of the 1950s he began his work with Tagli, whereby he sliced his canvas which continuously applying his Buchi technique, a style which he continued with up until his death in 1968. Through Concetto Spaziale, Fontana managed to blurr the lines between painting and sculpture.
His first Tagli was created at the end of the summer and early autumn of 1958 when Fontana was almost 60 years old. His canvases were filled with small diagonal incisions which he grouped together. Fontana experimented with size and form, and with time the slices became less and more powerful. To reach the right effect, Fontana was incredibally precise with the surface of the canvas, coating it first with a matt, often water based, monochrome colour. His pieces with only one slice are marked as "Attesa" and the canvases with multiple slices are marked with the plural form, "Arrese". The meaning "expectation or hope" gives an additional dimension to the work. Fontana covered the back piece with "telleta," strips of deep black fabric to create the illusion of an empty space behind the canvas. In Tagli, destruction and creation merge. Every slice is formulated through a definitive and irreversable gesture. Every action which results in a wound upon the canvas simultaneously allows for a new sculptural perspective out into the black neverending space behind the canvas. Fontana's artistic journey with Tagli and Buchi happened correspondingly with the 1960s space race.
"As an artist, when I work with one of my perforated canvases, I have no desire to create a painting; I want to create an opening for space, to give art a new dimension, to bind it to the cosmos, as it endlessly continues beyond the boundaries of the painting. With my innovation of holes drilled through the canvas in repeated formations, I do not wish to decorate a surface, but rather to break up its dimensional limitations. Behind the perforations lies a newfound freedom for interpretation, but also, just as inevitably, an end to art." (Lucio Fontana, 1966)
Fontana came and had several exhibitions in Sweden during the 1960s. One of his greatest admirers was the gallerist Pierre Lundholm at Galerie Pierre in Stockholm who not only arraned exhibitions in 1964, 1967, and after Fontana's death in 1971, but also stored and sold Fontana's work. Fontana even managed to exhibit at the Swedish French Art Gallery in 1965 as well as have a large exhibition at Moderna Museet in 1967 in Stockholm through the initiative of Pontus Hultén. His paintings were admired by the most asteemed collectors, and with the wider public, his works were preceived as bizzar and incomprehensible. Today Lucio Fontana is praised for his art that stood as a testament beyond his time.
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