Lucio Fontana

Galleria Levi, Milan
Galerie Iris Clert, Paris
Galerie Buren, Stockholm
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Milan, Galleria Levi, Continuità, 1962, n.p., illustrated

Enrico Crispolti, Fontana: Catalogo Generale, Milan 1986, Vol. I, no. 62 O 79, p. 592, illustrated
Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Milan 2006, Vol. II, no. 62 O 79, p. 406, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly deeper in the original. Condition: Please refer to the Contemporary Art Department for a professional condition report.
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Executed in 1962, Concetto Spaziale is a sumptuous homage to the most celebrated and iconic elements of Lucio Fontana’s seminal oeuvre: the gestural piercing of the canvas, the intense colouration of the monochrome surface, and the symbolism of the circular shape. The present work unites a complex blend of the artist’s fascination for technological progress such as space travel, echoed in the black void that opens up via a dramatic perforation, as well as his life-long admiration for the Baroque and opulent elements in art, represented here in the exuberant application of visceral pink paint. In his quest to liberate the painterly medium and move towards the fourth dimension, Fontana’s mature works from the last decade of his life encompass some of his most important artistic achievements. Forming part of Fontana’s celebrated corpus of Olii, this series constitutes a physical and existential pendant to the philosophical serenity of the Tagli.

The wavy, ovular shapes incised on the surface recall the universal symbol of birth and regeneration, a concept that is reverberated by the eroticism and mysticism of the downward thrust of the central opening. In this painting, the heavy lumps of visceral pink paint that frame a powerful perforation reveals a fleshy opening in the canvas that is replete with carnal physicality. As the art historian Peter Benson Miller has posited, the present work shares an affinity with conceptually ground-breaking pieces by Gustave Courbet and Marcel Duchamp, whose L’Origine du monde and Étant donnés are echoed in the vertical cavity of Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale: “the female body in Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde became the vehicle through which Duchamp reconfigured the relationship between a work of art and the beholder, implicating the latter physically in the space of the former. Similarly, Courbet’s painting offered a template for Fontana as he, too, attacked the tropes of ‘retinal’ art by slashing open the surface of the canvas and uncovering its fictions” (Peter Benson Miller, ‘Fontana and Courbet’, p. 3).

The sensuous colour of the present work is contrasted by the artist’s vehement puncturing and slashing of the canvas, an act that is inevitably associated with destructiveness and agony. Highlighting this visual paradox of pleasure and pain, Fontana commented that the Olii “symbolise the unsettled nature of the modern man. The fine outline... (drawn into the oily surface)... is the itinerary of man in space, his surprise and fear of getting lost; the cut, lastly, is a sudden scream of pain, the final release of deep anguish that in the end becomes unbearable” (Lucio Fontana in conversation with Grazia Livi, ‘Incontro con Lucio Fontana’, Vanita, Vol. VI, No. 13, Autumn 1962, p. 53). Indeed, the present work was conceived at a time when the universe literally opened up as a new arena for human endeavour; oscillating between sculptural materiality and painterly essence, Concetto Spaziale is suffused with the idea of rebirth in the age of cosmic exploration.

Fontana’s preference for monochrome compositions originated from his first encounter with the works of Yves Klein during Klein’s legendary exhibition at Galleria Apollinaire in Milan in 1957. The fleshy pink in particular seems to have attracted Fontana as he described it as “la rosa di mutand di don”, or the pink of ladies’ underpants, further alluding to the sensuality of the erotic shade (Lucio Fontana quoted in: Pia Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles 2012, p. 94). Reflecting on the powerful impact of the colour, curator Pia Gottschaller writes that “the visceral impact of the unusual colour was intended to be so startling that the identity of the material conveying it would recede in importance” (Ibid., p. 94).

In a combination of violence and passion, tradition and progress, Baroque opulence and scientific rigour, the present work forms a mosaic of Fontana’s rich inspirations that culminate in an emotive visual sensation. More than any other series, the Olii visualise Fontana’s fascination with the cosmic universe and form a potent representation of evocative dichotomies.