Lucio Fontana

Collection Paolo Masera, Milan (acquired directly from the artist circa 1936)
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogo Ragionato di Dipinti, Sculture, Ambientazioni, Milano 2006, Vol. I, p. 164, no. 35-36 SC 15, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although there are more pronounced green tones in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Some dust fibres and surface dirt have accumulated in the crevices of the sculpture. There is an old loss to the front left leg of the horse which has been confirmed by the Fontana archives as having been missing since circa 1945. All other surface irregularities are in keeping with the artist's choice of medium and working process.
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Lucio Fontana’s majestic Cavallo of 1935-1936 exudes vitality and force. In a tension between abstraction and figuration, its energetic shape extruding from a massed heap of clay is a tour de forceof dense, animated matter. The radiant luminosity of its deep bronze colour alludes to the original magma, making it an extremely sensual work. Immediately expressive and rooted in Baroque style, it is part of an exquisite series of ceramic animal sculptures that inspires harmony and vitality.  In 1936, directly after its creation, the elegant sculpture was acquired by the architect Paul Masera, who had a great influence on Fontana’s relationship with architecture.

Clay modelling and ceramics have always been central to the artist’s process, revealing his fascination for energy as an invisible element essential to both life and art. Passionate and creative, Fontana’s mastery of sculpture was influenced by the futurist ceramist Tullio Mazoti through the mid-thirties. Returning to figuration for about a decade - until the new trends of the post-war period emerged - his work allowed an exceptional tension between expressionism and matter. Turning away from the naturalistic figuration of the Novecento, Fontana shared the concerns of a new generation of painters and sculptors (from Birolli to Broggini) and engaged with the problems of both painting and sculpture in innovative and productive ways.

The exaggerated alternation of full and empty spaces in Cavallo, emphasizing the rhythm of the matter, anticipates Fontana’s perforated paintings - the spatial environments and slashed canvases that he created in the 1950s and 1960s. Both the dimension of chance and the violence of the gesture, evident from the start in Fontana’s use of ceramics, were to become strong traits of the artist’s Concetti Spaziale. Compositionally dynamic and mesmerizingly beautiful, the Cavallo announced the seminal artist’s revolutionary theories while engendering an inimitable gestural vocabulary that simultaneously reflected and impacted on his own time.