Lucio Fontana was born in Argentina, in Rosario di Santa Fé, son of Italians. After his studies in Italy, Fontana returned to Argentina where he collaborated with his father, sculptor and architect, in the production of funeral monuments. In 1927 he returned to Italy and enrolled at the Brera Academy where he took adolfo Wildt's sculpture course. He graduated in 1930 and immediately began the activity of sculptor that led him to be present at the Venice Biennale of the same year. In 1931 he exhibited at the Galleria del Milione in Milan, continuing to exhibit there in the following years regularly. In these years it is linked to the Group of Lombard Abstractists and the international movement "Abstraction-Création". In 1939 he returned to Argentina where in 1946 he published his "Manifiesto Blanco" in which he laid the foundations of the Spatialism he developed after his return to Italy in 1947. In fact, in 1947 he published the first "Manifesto of Spatialism" which is signed by Giorgio Kaisserlian, Beniamino Joppolo and Milena Milani. Then follow other posters on Spatialism touching all artistic forms even the nascent television. The ideas are realized with the presentation of the works at the Venice Biennale of 1948 and at the Galleria del Naviglio in 1949, where the first "Space Environment" shows the overcoming of the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture and their merging into the " Spatial Concept of Art". In this period Fontana operates the first holes in the canvases and realizes the large-scale neon that he presents at the Triennale di Milano in 1951.  In recent years the neon has been redone and stands on the ceiling of the highest hall of the Museo del Novecento in Milan, also visible from Piazza Duomo. In 1958 it was presented at the Biennale di Vernezia and in 1959 at the Galleria del Milione he presented the first cycle of the "Tagli" where with the gesture of cutting the canvas Fontana opens the work to the third dimension, that is to the space. He then glues variously colored glass sedges onto the canvas giving the works a baroque flavor. Then follow the cycles of the Teatrini,nature, fine di Dio,space environments, carried on until his death in 1968.

Tags: Lucio Fontana - Fontana - Adolfo Wildt - Venice Biennale - Manifiesto Blanco - Spatialism - Space Manifesto - Tagli- Teatrini - End of God

 

Lucio Fontana - Spatialism

Spatialism is identified with Lucio Fontana who set the conditions in his "Manifiesto Blanco" of 1946 when he was still living in Argentina. Although other artists, such as Roberto Crippa, adhered to Spatialism, Fontana remains the undisputed master of this movement, the other artists who learned its principles are defined with the term postspatialists among which we include above all Paolo Scheggi and Vanna Nicolotti . The assumption of Spatialism is that the canvas can have a third dimension while remaining a flat surface. The third dimension more than physical is a mental dimension, left to the imagination or to the inner feeling of the viewer. The origin dates back to when Lucio Fontana was a child and went to peek inside the churches through the ajar doors, seeing little but imagining a lot. Hence the origin of the cuts on the canvas that, except for the first ones, have the flaps folded inside the canvas to favor the attraction of the viewer from the unknown space that the cut creates. In 1951, during a conference at the Triennale di Milano, Fontana defined Spatialism in these terms: " an art based on the unity of time and space. Spatialists will create in spaces and through spaces the new fantasies of art. We conceive art as a sum of physical elements, color, sound, movement, time, space, conceiving a physical-psychic unity, color the element of space, sound the element of time and the movement that develops in time and space. They are the fundamental forms of spatial art" tags: Spatialism - Lucio Fontana - Fontana - Paolo Scheggi - Vanna Nicolotti - spatial art - postspatialists

Lucio Fontana - Analisi di Mercato

December 2019. By now the prices of Lucio Fontana's works have reached very high levels, exceeding 10 million euros for some types of works. This has dragged up all the quotations of Lucio Fontana's works, from ceramics, now permanently above 100,000 euros, to drawings that are placed above 10,000 euros. Being by now a world-renowned artist with exhibitions and auctions all over the world, a continuous increase in the prices of the works can be expected.

Tags: Lucio Fontana - ceramics - drawings

Lucio Fontana - Contributi

Lucio Fontana, despite the notoriety he derives from his pictorial works, is essentially a sculptor, an activity that he was able to refine in the Brera years under the guidance of the sculptor Adolfo Wildt of whom he was the favorite pupil. In a 2007 interview Gillo Dorfles expressed himself in these terms: "his painting is a sculptor's painting. It takes little to understand it, the fact of the holes, the fact of the cuts, which are undoubtedly emblematic of the artistic activity of Fontana, after all they come from his experience in space". In fact, the penetration of the canvas with cuts and holes does not belong to the canons of painting but rather to those of sculpture. I was guided by a great teacher: Wildt, I was considered the best student of the course. And Wildt, indeed, had expressed to me several times that I would become the continuer of his art. Instead, as soon as I left the Academy, I took a mass of plaster, gave it a roughly figurative structure of a seated man and threw tar on it. Thus, for a violent reaction. Wildt complained, and what could I tell him? I had great respect for him, I was grateful to him, but I was interested in finding a new path, a path that was entirely mine. Lucius Fontana 1963 The "hole", the "cut", the graphic sign, have a primordial appearance: they recall the holes that stud, with an exorcistic meaning, animal or human images on the walls of prehistoric caves, they re-propose the exciting act of penetration, of hit and score; but they also have an aspect of conceptual essentialization; and it is perhaps precisely here that the theme of Fontana's "Spatialism" is declared with greater clarity and precision. Enrico Crispolti, Milan 2004 Lucio Fontana is the son of a dual culture, Italian and Argentinian. which leads him to embrace two apparently irreconcilable trends: the linear and coherent evolution of typically European art and eclecticism, or the aptitude for mixing, interweaving, contamination that often arises from the lack of its own roots, typical of South American culture. Achille Bonito Oliva The sculptor Fontana often uses ceramics as a material for his sculptures. And this sculptural technique will make converts throughout the twentieth century for which many artists are interested in it and for which the furnaces become centers of aggregation and comparison Lucio Fontana drew in the morning, preferably on Sunday morning, and stated verbatim: a model comes here and I fill folder after folder with female nudes. I do it to keep myself in exercise, almost in secret.

Tags: Lucio Fontana - Adolfo Wildt - Gillo Dorfles - holes - cuts - spatialism