Lucio Fontana

Private Collection, Milan
Hélène Sutton, Basel
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1995

New York, Panicali Fine Art, Lucio Fontana: Works 1958 - 1965, October 1988, cat. no. 6, n.p., illustrated in color

Exh. Cat., Milan, Galleria Pagani del Grattacielo (a), Lucio Fontana, 1961 (terracotta version)
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II, Brussels, 1974, cat. no. 59-60 N 32, pp. 106-107, illustrated in color (terracotta version)
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana Catalogo Generale, Vol. I, Milan, 1986, p. 358, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Paris, Galerie Karsten Greve, Lucio Fontana. Peintures et sculptures, 1989, pp. 88 - 91, illustrated in color (terracotta version and bronze ed. 2/3)
Carlo Pirovano, Scultura Italiana del Novecento: Opere Tendenze Protagonisti, Milan, 1993, pl. 364, p. 264, illustrated (terracotta version)
Exh. Cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (and traveling), The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943 - 1968, 1994, pl. 54, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Exh. Cat., Barcelona, Fundación "La Caixa" (and traveling), Europa de Postguerra 1945 - 1965. Arte despues del diluivo, 1995, cat. no. 35, pp. 219 and 459, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Exh Cat., Prato, Museo Pecci, Burri e Fontana 1949 - 1968, 1996, no. 32, p. 171, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Mario Bertoni, "Burri e Fontana," Il Segno, no. 148, June 1996, no. 1, illustrated (bronze ed. 0/3)
Exh. Cat., Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Città Natura. Mostra Internazionale di Arte Contemporanea, 1997, p. 252 (bronze ed. 0/3)
Exh. Cat., Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Lucio Fontana, 1998, no. 4/S/7, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Exh. Cat., Monaco di Baviera, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Lucio Fontana. La Fine Di Dio (Nature Cubo di luce), 1998, pp. 12 and 40, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 1/3)
Exh. Cat., Milan, PAC. Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (and traveling), Centenario di Lucio Fontana. Cinque mostre a Milano: Lucio Fontana, 199, no. I, 116, p. 348, illustrated (bronze ed. 0/3)
Exh. Cat., Rodengo Saiano, Abbazia Olivetana, Fondazione Ambrosetti Arte Contemporanea, Lucio Fontana: L'altro Spazio, 1999, (bronze ed. 1/3)
Vittorio Sgarbi, "Nel segno di Fontana," Grazia, no. 16, April 1999, p. 100, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Mario Perazzi, "Tagli a regola d'arte," Io Donna del Corriere della Sera, no. 15/16, a. IV, April 1999, p. 240, illustrated in color (bronze 0/3)
Sergio Frau, "Tagliato per il successo," Il Venerdì di Repubblica, no. 579, April 1999, p. 135, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Marco di Capua, "Quello dei tagli," Ars, no. 5, a. III, May 1999, p. 76, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., London, Hayward Gallery, Lucio Fontana, 1999, no. 92, pp. 159 and 206, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (and traveling), Lucio Fontana: A òtica do invisível, 2001, pp. 132 and 246, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Exh. Cat., Verona, Palazzo Forti, Lucio Fontana, metafore barocche, 2002, p. 96, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Minstero per i beni e le attività culturali, DAEC-Direzione Gernerale per l'Architettura e l'Arte Contemporanee, I luoghi del contemporaneo. Musei, Gallerie, Centri d'Arte e Fondazioni in Italia, Roma, 2003, p. 104, illustrated in color (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Burgdorf, Museum Franz Gertsch, Lucio Fontana, 2004, pl. 92, pp. 140 and 149, illustrated in color (bronze ed. 0/3)
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana: Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture, Painting, Volume I, Milan, 2006, cat. no. 59-60 N 32, p. 540, illustrated (edition no. unknown)

This work is in excellent condition overall. In some of the concave folds of the work's surface, there are areas of whitish casting residue as evident in the catalogue illustration. There is some dust and airborne matter that has settled at the bottom of the deep aperture.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In the summer of 1959, only months after he executed the first of his Attese paintings, Lucio Fontana began a series of terracotta sculptures which he called Natura. Translating his trademark incisive slash from his canvases into the roundness of a large three-dimensional sphere, Fontana deeply carved the orbital form with a long metal chisel, achieving the appearance of an eruption from deep within the object's inner core. These sculptures, like the Attese, are about simplicity of material and economy of intervention. However the Attese paintings can be nothing if not man-made; whereas the spheres look as if they are the result of a natural phenomenon. With the Natura sculptures, characterized by slashes or deep holes, the artist has taken possession of his material in a sensory and erotic fashion. The grandeur of these solid dark forms lies in their simplicity and monumental physical presence. Cast in bronze in 1985 from a 1959-1960 terracotta, Concetta Spaziale, Natura, maintains the intimacy between the artist and his material while it evokes a sense of the weight and the freedom of unformed material mass in the throes of change.

These works are truly primordial; they carry us to the origins of the earth and its volcanic ferment or, on the other hand, to the silence of interstellar space. The cosmic allusion was explained by Fontana in a conversation with Carla Lonzi: "...all the time I was thinking about those worlds, about the moon, with these... holes, this atrocious silence which fills us with anguish, and the cosmonauts in a new world. So that then in the imagination of artists ...amidst these immense things which have been there for billions of years...man arrives...amidst this mortal silence, this huge anguish, and he leaves a vital mark of his arrival." Another more intimate, personal metaphor for the crater or aperture is that of a wound. Violence had been a normal part of Fontana's childhood in Argentina and during the First World War in Italy in 1918 he was shot in the arm while serving as a volunteer in the army.