Lucio Fontana

Donati Collection, Milan
Sale: Brearte, Milan, 29 April 1982, Lot 41
Vismara Arte Contemporanea, Milan
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogue raisonné des peintures et environments spatiaux, Vol. II, Brussels 1974, p. 191, no. 67 T 39, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo Ragionato di Sculture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. II, Milan 1986, p. 660, no. 67 T 39, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo Ragionato di Sculture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. II, Milan 2006, p. 856, no. 67 T 39, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals a faint handling mark at the centre of the top edge as faintly visible in the catalogue illustration. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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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."

Concetto Spaziale, Attese is a wonderful example of Lucio Fontana’s most iconic and celebrated series of works; the tagli or cuts. Executed in 1967, the present work came into being at the very height of Fontana’s career, a year after he was awarded the first prize for painting at the XXXII Venice Biennale, and almost ten years after the execution of his first slashed canvases. The technical perfection which he had achieved at this late stage of his career enabled him to successfully create this beautifully balanced and rhythmical composition. The whiteness of the canvas, which he regarded as the purest colour within the series, contrasts starkly with the black gauze - or teletta (Italian for ‘little piece of canvas’) as Fontana called them affectionately - which he placed behind each of the slashes. This seemingly unimportant feature of Concetto Spaziale, Attese was fundamental in the expression of Fontana’s ideas about spatiality and the Infinite. The artist himself had explained in 1961 how his “tagli are primarily a philosophical expression, an act of faith in the Infinite, an affirmation of spirituality. When I sit down in front of one of my tagli, to contemplate it, I suddenly feel a great expansion of the spirit, I feel like a man liberated from the slavery of the material, like a man who belongs to the vastness of the present and the future” (the artist cited in: Pia Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana. The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles 2009, p. 87). The slashes in Concetto Spaziale, Attese produce this very same feeling. When standing in front of it one can almost sense the idea of this new dimension where time and space are a continuum.

Having trained and worked as a sculptor in his youth, Fontana never considered himself a painter but sought to blur the confines of painting, sculpture and even environmental art in his work. Like many other artists before him he was fascinated by the technological progress attained during the first half of the Twentieth Century. Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity had already caused a profound impact on artists at the dawn of the century with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque delving into the investigation of how to represent different perspectives - or moments in time - in a single artwork. In Italy, too, artists such as Umberto Boccioni became the artistic representatives of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist movement, which glorified the future, technology and progress. Like Picasso and Braque in Paris, Boccioni, alongside other artists such as Carlo Carrà or Giacomo Balla, sought to reproduce those ideas in their paintings, with Boccioni creating dynamic canvases such as his series of States of Mind from 1911 in which he captured the transient and chaotic nature of industrial life. He later turned to sculpture to represent all of these ideas in three-dimensional form, creating now-iconic artworks such as Unique Forms of Continuity in Space in 1913.

Lucio Fontana started his investigation of time and space much later, but his exploration was so revolutionary that it has been said he “challenges the history of painting. With one bold stroke he pierces the canvas and tears it to shreds. Through this action he declares before the entire world that the canvas is no longer a pictorial vehicle and asserts that easel painting, a constant in art heretofore, is called into question. Implied in this gesture is both the transformation of a five-hundred year evolution in Western painting and a new beginning, for destruction carries innovation in its wake” (Erika Billeter cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Lucio Fontana 1899-1968: A Retrospective, 1977, p. 13). Fontana took the representation of a new dimension to the next level by literally penetrating the two-dimensional picture plane to show the viewer a vision of the dark void of infinite space. When looking at Concetto Spaziale, Attese one can experience the transcendence of physical matter, retracing mentally the act of perforation that took place for its making.

This act is the culmination of the most precise of preparation processes. Fontana would choose his canvases very meticulously, having them made to order with specific instructions. He would then prime them and paint them with utmost care to eliminate any brushstroke marks. When the canvas was ready, he would stand in front of it, alone, the climax of the creative process having arrived. With a quick gesture, the artist perforated the pictorial surface with his knife; the motion of the blade lay suspended, captured in the canvas forever in time. Concetto Spaziale, Attese seizes this moment repeatedly and rhythmically, the cuts flowing like a lyrical composition. The present work is an arresting example of Fontana’s artistic mastery, which has been described as “an inexhaustible mine of discovery, creating a prospectus of art without classifications or hierarchies, projected towards future generations who perceive in him the potential for numerous and unexpected revelations” (Luca Massimo Barbero, ‘Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York, 2006-07, p. 21).