Lucio Fontana

Piero Fideli, Milan
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 20th Century Italian Art, 24 October 2005, Lot 20
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Turin, Castello di Rivoli, Lucio Fontana: La Cultura dell'Occhio, 1986, p. 39, no. 18, illustrated

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogue Raisonné des Peintures et Environments Spatiaux, Vol. II, Brussels 1974, p. 52, no. 57 BA 31, illustrated

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo Ragionato di Sculture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. II, Milan 1986, p. 180, no. 57 BA 31, illustrated

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo Ragionato di Sculture, Dipinti, Ambientazioni, Vol. II, Milan 2006, p. 335, no. 57 BA 31, illustrated

Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the illustration fails to convey the glittering lustrini and the richly impastoed passages of paint. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals extremely light canvas draw to the left corners. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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."

Executed in 1957, Concetto Spaziale belongs to Lucio Fontana’s important and celebrated barocci (‘the Baroque ones’) series. Pursued between 1954 and 1957, the barocci stem from Fontana’s intensely driven exploration of the Baroque idiom translated into uniquely modernist terms. Bestowed with glittering lustrini and the textured impasto unique to the barocci series, the present work testifies to a period of personal exploration wherein Fontana delved into the European historical tradition that most deeply influenced his oeuvre.
The exaggerated manipulation of paint, sensational lighting, and passages of coarse impasto rendered by the addition of sand-like particles, identify Concetto Spaziale as a masterpiece of its series. Its rhythmically applied areas of yellow paint beautifully recall the contemporaneous calligraphic compositions of Pierre Soulages. Associated with Art Informel in 1952 by influential French critic Michel Tapié’s book Un art autre, Fontana was, like Soulages, concerned to express subjective psychic states through an aesthetic experience. Yet the concern to use colour narratively equally harkens back to more historical, and uniquely Italian, precedents. Adopting a dynamically varied palette, Fontana emulates the atmospherically varied shades associated with Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, establishing a dramatic relationship between the painting’s various components. The extremes of light and shadow employed by Caravaggio to suggest movement, space, and feeling appear simplified, distilled, and stripped down to their basic components with magnificent effect in the present work.
Exposure to the Baroque had a deeply formative impact upon Fontana. The rich European roots of architecture and art in Buenos Aires allowed Fontana to experience the Baroque on a daily basis while he resided in Argentina during the war. Pia Gottschaller has noted that, upon leaving Argentina in 1947, the artist “had come to regard the Baroque as his native culture, which led him to adopt the period’s tenets as the foundation for modern art in general and for his own research in particular. For Fontana, this would mean striving for a fusion of sculpture, architecture, and painting – seeking to create a dynamic whole that envelops the viewer in a new and undefined experience of space” (Pia Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles 2012, p. 15). His first manifesto Il Manifesto Blanco (1946) had concluded with an appreciation of how Baroque forms, by emulating and disseminating movement in every possible place and direction, visually embodied a notion of active space and – by extension – of time. With the barocchi Fontana expresses, excavates, and celebrates the very foundations of his own artistic practice. A testament to this deeply personal and impassioned process, the impastoed paint, glittering lustrini and moving combinations of colour deployed by Concetto Spaziale position it among the finest of Fontana’s elegies to the Baroque.