Recognised as the founder of Spatialism, Lucio Fontana was a prolific artist who was driven by a desire to highlight and explore the relationship between surface and dimensionality.Fontana’s techniques included slicing through canvas and punching holes in the surface of his work – Spatial Concept is a series of works that exemplify this particular technique and Fontana would … By ripping through his canvases, Lucio Fontana changed what a painting could be, and the course of art history. With his Pietre (stones) series, begun in 1952, Fontana fused the sculptural with painting by encrusting the surfaces of his canvases with heavy impasto and colored glass. Spatial Concept, New York 10, 1962 by Lucio Fontana © Fondazione Lucio Fontana Milano After founding the Manifesto Blanco in 1946, Fontana began to further push the limits of contemporary art. [14] In 1959 Fontana exhibited cut-off paintings with multiple combinable elements (he named the sets quanta), and began Nature, a series of sculptures made by cutting a gash across a sphere of terracotta clay, which he subsequently cast in bronze. Lucio Fontana was an Argentine-Italian artist known as the founder of Spatialism. Born to Italian parents in Rosario de Santa Fé, Argentina, in 1899, Lucio Fontana began his artistic career as a sculptor, working under his father Luigi before setting out on his own. Although Fontana's ideas were vague, his outlook was influential, for he was one of the first, certainly the first European artist to truly promote the idea of art as gesture or performance, rather than as the creation of an enduring physical work. In 2005, the Franco-German artist couple Cécile Colle and Ralf Nuhn[2] produced a series of canvases with computer connectors inserted into them, entitled "Cyber-Spatialism." In each work, Fontana invents new methods to apply concepts of spatialism, freeing himself from the confines of the object in order to continue his search for modern modes of expression and perception. In particular, examples from the Pietre series are housed in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, the Museum of Contemporary Art Villa Croce in Genoa and the van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Lucio Fontana (Italian: [ˈluːtʃo fonˈtaːna]; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. [4] Fontana was subsequently invited by Michel Tapié to exhibit the works at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. It was there he presented his first exhibition in 1930, organized by the Milan art gallery Il Milione. [23] The first major American retrospective since the artist's death came in 2019 at the Met Breuer. [9], Fontana often lined the reverse of his canvases with black gauze so that the darkness would shimmer behind the open cuts and create a mysterious sense of illusion and depth. (60 x 100 cm.) In the text, which Fontana did not sign but to which he actively contributed, he began to formulate the theories that he was to expand as Spazialismo, or Spatialism, in five manifestos from 1947 to 1952. His trademark perforated canvases drew both the ire and admiration of … [7], In the last years of his career, Fontana became increasingly interested in the staging of his work in the many exhibitions that honored him worldwide, as well as in the idea of purity achieved in his last white canvases. Fontana had his first solo exhibitions at Galleria del Milione, Milan, in 1931. Lucio Fontana (Italian: [ˈluːtʃo fonˈtaːna]; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. Known as a founder of Spatialism and for his ties to Arte Povera, Fontana remains one of the monumental figures in the time of great artists. Five more manifestos followed; they were more specific in their negative than their positive aspects, and carried the concept of Spatialism little further than the statement that its essence consisted in "plastic emotions and emotions of colour projected upon space". [16], Around 1960, Fontana began to reinvent the cuts and punctures that had characterized his highly personal style up to that point, covering canvases with layers of thick oil paint applied by hand and brush and using a scalpel or Stanley knife to create great fissures in their surface. [22] He participated in the Bienal de São Paulo and in numerous exhibitions around the world. It repudiated the illusory or "virtual" space of tradition… Throughout his prolific career, Lucio Fontana demonstrated a relentless interest in the relationship between surface and dimensionality. The movement (Movimento Spaziale – spacialist movement, or spacialism) was launched in 1947 after Lucio Fontana ’s return to Italy from Argentina … One of those artists is the legendary Lucio Fontana. The movement focused on the spatial qualities of sculpture and paintings with the goal of breaking through the two-dimensionality of the traditional picture plane. Lucio Fontana was an Argentine-Italian artist known as the founder of Spatialism. References. "Servant of Two Masters: Lucio Fontana's 1948 Sculptures in Milan's Cinema Arlecchino". Lucio Fontana is a revered theorist, painter, and sculptor from the 1960s who is best remembered for founding spatialism, an art movement that made its mark in the art industry. [10] He then created an elaborate neon ceiling called "Luce spaziale" in 1951 for the Triennale in Milan. 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