Lot 22
  • 22

LUCIO FONTANA | Figura Femminile con Fiori (Female Figure with Flowers)

Estimate
1,500,000 - 2,000,000 GBP
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Description

  • Lucio Fontana
  • Figura Femminile con Fiori (Female Figure with Flowers)
  • signed on the lower part of the figure's dress
  • polychrome glazed ceramic in two parts on polychrome glazed ceramic base
  • 242 by 116.5 by 90 cm. 95 1/4 by 45 7/8 by 35 3/8 in.
  • Executed in 1948.

Provenance

Gi. Vi. Emme, Milan Private Collection, Milan

Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above in 1990)

Sotheby's, London, 15 October 2010, Lot 10 (consigned by the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited

Palma di Mallorca, Fundació La Caixa; and Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Lucio Fontana. Entre matéria y espacio, July - November 1998, p. 57, no. 8, illustrated in colour Paris, The Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Lucio Fontana: Retrospective, April - August 2014, pp. 105 and 137, no. 57, illustrated in colour

Literature

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana Catalogo Ragionato, Milan 2006, Vol. I, p. 213, no. 48 SC 21, illustrated incorrectly without base

Condition

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although the blue tonality of the figure's dress is slightly paler in the original. Condition: Overall the work is in very condition. The work is constructed from three individual ceramic parts and divided up as per the below. The work generally fluoresces unevenly when examined under ultraviolet light, and highlights a few scattered chips and cracks. Base: There are small and unobtrusive losses and abrasions to the glazing on all sides where the terracotta becomes visible. These range from 3mm to 1cm in length and are most notable towards the top and bottom edges; some of these fluoresce brightly under ultraviolet light. Lower figure: There are unobtrusive cracks to all sides that appear to be original and in keeping with the firing of the ceramic (the glazing covers the inside of the cracks too); one of these - located towards the lower centre of the figure's right side - has been consolidated and fluoresces brightly under ultraviolet light. There are scattered unobtrusive losses in places, predominantly to the lower edges. Upper figure: Close inspection reveals only a small number of tiny losses, mostly to the lower edge. All other surface irregularities appear to be original. There is an unobtrusive crack to the figure's left wrist which fluoresces brightly when examined under ultraviolet light.
"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

“I am a sculptor and not a ceramist. I have never turned a plate on a potter’s wheel or painted a vase. […] During my long stay at the Sèvres laboratories I researched and studied form, the expression of form. As in my studio, I continued to sculpt figures and metamorphoses weighing hundreds of pounds, and to paint them in bright color. My plastic form from the earliest to the latest models is never dissociated from the colour. My sculptures have always been polychrome. […] Color and form are indissoluble, born of an identical need."  Lucio Fontana cited in: Enrico Crispolti, Fontana, Milan 1999, p. 118.

One of the largest and most important sculptures from Lucio Fontana’s eminent oeuvre, Figura Femminile con Fiori (Female Figure with Flowers) stands at the apogee of the artist’s achievements in sculpture and ceramics. Whilst Fontana today is heralded for his iconic piercing of the canvas through his buchi (holes) and tagli (cuts), his sculptures mark the very genesis of his unremitting exploration of Spatialism. Figura Femminile con Fiori is referred to in the literature as a portrait of the artist’s wife Teresita Rasini, whom he met in 1930 and married in 1952. Executed in 1948, it is believed to have been inspired by the Miss Italia contest that was re-instated that same year following the end of the Second World-War. The society Gi. Vi. Emme, who organised the contest, is thought to have commissioned this work alongside other works with female subjects. Perfectly demonstrating Fontana’s complex understanding of three-dimensional form, Figura Femminile con Fiori encapsulates the artist’s unique ability to meld the abstract and figurative to create a compelling ideal of beauty and a vibrant manifestation of the pulsating optimism of post-war Italy.

Fontana began his sculptural career at his father’s firm, making funerary busts from gesso and marble: materials that require great skill, extreme patience and allow little room for error or correction. Whilst this vocation required that the young Fontana focus on figurative subjects in a naturalistic manner, it was not until 1928 that he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and began formal training as a neo-Classical sculptor under Adolf Wildt. However, soon after leaving the Brera academy, where he studied for two years, Fontana rejected its academic prescriptions and formalist agenda. As he recalled in an interview some years later: “I took a great lump of plaster, gave it the rough shape of a seated man and then threw tar over it. Just like that, as a violent reaction. Naturally, Wildt took a dim view of it” (Lucio Fontana cited in: La Nación, Buenos Aires, 6 June 1943, in: Jole De Sanna, Lucio Fontana: Materia Spazio Concetto, Milan 1993, p. 10). Fontana moved further away from his traditional education at the Brera Academy when he relocated to the small city of Albisolas in 1935. It was here, in the workshop of the Futurist ceramicist Tullio Mazzotti, that he began his career in ceramics.

Influenced by Mazzotti, Fontana’s artistic philosophy became heavily effected by Futurism's radical desire to encompass movement and dynamism within the static image. Compared to Fontana’s earlier more abstract works, his production in Albisola demonstrates an increased dramatic tension, fuelled by a desire to investigate gestural figuration in sculpture. In 1946, two years before the creation of the present work, Fontana published his first Manifesto Blanco in Buenos Aires. The text primarily heralded a synthesis of space, time, colour, sound and movement – echoing both the spatiality of Baroque art and the dynamism of Futurism. Fontana glorified Baroque artists as activators of space by their suggestion of movement, and was above all inspired by the theatricality and pathos of sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini.  Elevated onto a classical pedestal, Figura Femminile con Fiori is almost two and a half meters tall. The traditional contrapposto pose draws parallels to classical works such as Michelangelo’s David, whilst the floating movement of the dress, flowers and hair recalls both the infamous Nike of Samothrace (c. 220-190 BC), as well as Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne (1622–1625).

Typical and unique to Fontana’s ceramics is an insistent emphasis on matter and movement articulated through a sense of gestural handling. The clay is strangely elongated, with fragmentary elements of superfluous matter emanating like frills and tendrils. Where 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 that 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. 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, varying 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 female figure yet infused it with a personal abstract energy to create a monumental tableau of expressive corporeality.

Representing the artist’s longstanding fascination with the activation of space, Figura Femminile con Fiori exemplifies the profound appeal that Fontana’s work maintains across mediums through its combination of concept with charismatic physicality.



This work is registered in the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan under number 2921/2.