Lot 25
  • 25

Lucio Fontana

Estimate
600,000 - 800,000 GBP
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Description

  • Lucio Fontana
  • Pagliacci
  • each: incised with the artist's signature; incised with the artist's initials and dated 51 on the underside
  • painted and glazed ceramic
  • (i) 60 by 35 by 24cm.; 23 5/8 by 13 3/4 by 9 1/2 in.
  • (ii) 64 by 32 by 23cm.; 25 1/8 by 12 5/8 by 9 1/8 in.

Provenance

Private Collection, Milan

Sale: Finarte, Milan, 24 October 1983, Lot. 52

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

Exhibited

Milan, Palazzo dell'Arte al Parco, IX Triennale di Milano, 1951

Literature

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo Generale, Vol. I, Milan 1986, p. 154, no. 51 SC 2 and 51 SC 3, illustrated

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo Ragionato di Sculture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. I, Milan 2006, p. 294, no. 51 SC 2 and 51 SC 3, illustrated

Condition

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is warmer in the original. Condition:This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals thin hairline cracks in places throughout both figures, some of which have been consolidated and fluoresce under ultra-violet light. There are a few small chips in isolated places, notably to the back of the left figure and the collar of the right figure.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

Through a vibrant arrangement of peculiar forms moulded with a characteristic sense of organic delicacy, coalescing to substantiate an expressionistic representation of two gesturing clowns, Lucio Fontana’s Pagliacci stands at the apogee of his ceramic achievements.  Representing the artist’s longstanding fascination with the activation of space, which has made him one of the most compelling practitioners of the Twentieth Century, this unique work perfectly demonstrates Fontana’s skill as an intuitive sculptor with a complex understanding of three dimensional form. Caught at a point between abstract and figurative projects in 1950, here we see Fontana deftly drawing on each visual mode to create two forms that hold an idiosyncratically charismatic presence.

Whilst Fontana today remains well known for his iconic piercing of the canvas through his buchi (holes) and tagli (cuts), his artistic genesis is rooted firmly in the medium of sculpture and it is undeniable that this background proved paramount in articulating his conceptual understanding of space. Fontana first worked in his father’s firm creating funerary busts, sculpting from gesso and marble; materials that require great skill, extreme patience and allow little room for error or corrections. Whilst this vocation required that the young Fontana focus on figurative subjects in a naturalistic manner, it was not until the mid-1930s that he began his career as a ceramicist, relocating to the small city of Albisola with a circle of Futurist artists who were exploring new uses for the medium.

Fontana’s artistic philosophy of Spatialism became heavily influenced by the Futurist’s radical desire to encompass movement or dynamism within the static image. Created in 1950, just a year after Fontana inaugurated his seminal buchi, the present work represents a move beyond his Futurist predecessors, from an emphasis on dynamism to a consideration of the way in which an artwork can inhabit and demarcate space. The determined strides and the undulating forms that peak and recess in disparate directions undoubtedly pay homage to Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space  from 1913;  an iconic achievement in Futurist sculpture.  Yet whilst Boccioni immortalised a sense of aggressively free flowing movement in smooth and curvaceous forms of bronze, Fontana’s Pagliacci enact an exploration of the dispersal of recognisable forms in and across space, through a sense of delicacy and elegance that is perfectly emphasised in the ceramic medium. Typical and unique to Fontana’s ceramics we find an insistent emphasis on matter and movement articulated through a sense of gestural handling and a sparse treatment of colour.  The clay is strangely elongated, with fragmentary elements of superfluous matter emanating like frills and tendrils.

Whilst Fontana’s later slashing of the canvas can be seen as an affront to the construction of depth through linear perspective that had been the bastion of Italian Renaissance art, the present work can be viewed as an equally radical affront to another medium which held an important sense of personal cultural heritage: Italian Maiolica. This traditional tin-glazed Italian pottery of the Fifteenth Century shows finely painted figurative subjects, demarcated in bright colours and punctuated by white backgrounds and the same ochre tones that the present work references. Whilst such ceramics hold associations with the decorative and utilitarian arts, here their traditional character is usurped through a new visual identity that embraces rough mouldings, vagrant tones and a lyrical fusion of abstraction and representation. Rather than embracing the iconography of the machine as his Futurist predecessors did, Fontana worked within the traditional cultural trope of the clown yet infused it with a personal abstract energy to create an arresting tableau of a fantastical performance by two unworldly figures.

Fontana’s 1946 Manifiesto Blanco included a selected account of the history of art which culminated in the Baroque, glorifying baroque artists as activators of space by their suggestion of movement.  Focusing on the idea that “movement, the capacity to evolve and to develop, is a basic property of matter”, the tenants of this manifesto find true expression within the present work (Lucio Fontana, ‘The White Manifesto’, in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Eds., Art in Theory 1900 – 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Oxford 2003, p. 655). The two figures which appear to gesticulate in poses between theatre and a dual, embrace diagonal and upward movements, dramatic shadows and indulgent deformities. These evince a lingering fascination with the Baroque, which would itself result in Fontana’s later series of Barocchi.

The restrained polychromy of the Pagliacci complements the extremely tactile quality they hold, pushing forth their corporeality as expressive forms caught in continual perceptive fluctuation between strange abstraction and symbolic familiarity. The work is an exemplar of the profound appeal that Fontana’s work maintains across mediums in its ability to embody conceptual ideals within charismatically physical works of art that have endless aesthetic allure.