Lucio Fontana

Galerie Bleue, Stockholm

Acquired from the above by the previous owner

Thence by descent to the present owner

Milan, Galleria Apollinaire, Lucio Fontana, November 1965

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogue raisonné des peintures, sculptures et environnements spatiaux, Brussels 1974, p. 173, no. 65 TE 54, illustrated

Enrico Crispolti, Fontana, Catalogo generale, Vol. II, Milan 1986, p. 603, no. 65 TE 54, illustrated

Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Vol. II, Milan 2006, p. 792, no. 65 TE 54, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly lighter and warmer in the original. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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Executed in 1965, Concetto Spaziale, Teatrino is an outstanding example of Lucio Fontana's series familiarly called Teatrini, ‘little theatres’. Contained by a lacquered frame, the pale picture plane has been elegantly punctured with the artist's signature buchi (holes) that strike through to the conceptual infinity of the void beyond. Conceived between 1964 and 1966, just after Fontana’s acclaimed cycle of La fine di Dio, this series epitomizes the artist’s attempt to create a physical landscape that would represent Spatial Infinity. Shown for the first time in his solo exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan in October–November 1965, they hover on the cusp between painting and sculpture and introduce a playful figurative element to Fontana’s ceaseless research into the concept of Spatialism.

In Concetto Spaziale, Teatrino, a deep crimson frame delimits the white canvas, broken by a sinuous line of small holes travelling from the bottom-right corner to the top. Two primeval spheres, reminiscent of Fontana’s Nature cycle (1959–60), rest on the lower edge of the jagged outer-frame. As Crispolti stated, Fontana went “beyond the absoluteness of the surface”, creating a hybrid work, at once painting and sculpture (Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, Tomo I, Milan 2015, Vol. I, p. 27). The Teatrini were neither regarded nor conceived by the artist as simple paintings, rather as independent spatial environments. The lacquered frame acts as a stage curtain, unveiling the visual illusionism of the scene to its audience. The composition captivates the viewer, who is encouraged to decipher what stands in front of him. Moving away from the abstraction of his Buchi and Tagli, in his Teatrini Fontana returns to a semi-figurative language that allows him to breathe life into his intimate stages.

A year before he created Concetto Spaziale, Teatrino, Fontana visited the 32nd Venice Biennale, where Europe saw American Pop Art for the first time. Intrigued by the movement’s predilection for bold colours, and its fascination with the developing commerciality and scientific discoveries of modern-day society, the artist developed his own original response to Pop Art. His “small theatres” are candid and spontaneous in their figurative language, making them easily approachable by the viewer. With their bright palette, organic shapes and defined order, they are, using the artist’s own words, “a little bit in the fashion of these Pop Art things...but still in my way. They were forms that Man imagines in space” (Lucio Fontana cited in: Pia Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles 2012, p. 114).

Fontana’s fascination with the infinite universe and man’s cosmic travels played a significant role in his late theories on Spatialism. He created the Teatrini just a few years after Yuri Gagarin’s first journey into outer space. With their “poly-dimensionality” they represent an aesthetic metaphor of man’s aspiration to conquer the unknown (Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Beyond Space, Milan 2008, p. 17). Despite being aware that “Man in Space is alone, alone before Infinity”, with his playful theatres, Fontana shows his desire to connect our world – symbolically represented by the jagged frame and the natural spheres – with the infinity of the universe (Luca Massimo Barbero and Paolo Campiglio, Lucio Fontana, Teatrini, Mantua 1997, p. 13). In this dimension, the punctured pathway of his buchi becomes a constellation of luminous stars. Light and infinity pass through them, exhausting, according to the artist, the need to paint (Enrico Crispolti, Op. cit., p. 65). Herein, Fontana creates a cosmic allusion that captivates our imagination and guides us towards the unknown.