Lucio Fontana
(Rosario, 1899 – Comabbio, 1968)
Lucio Fontana was an Italian painter, sculptor, ceramist, and finally the founder of the “Spazialismo” movement. Born in Rosario de Santa Fé, in the Argentine, son of the Milanese sculptor Luigi Fontana and an Argentinian mother. Lived in Italy from 1905-22, then again in Rosario de Santa Fé, where he opened a sculpture studio. He returned to Italy in 1928, where he studied sculpture in Milan at the Brera Academy (1928-30). The first one-man exhibition was at the Galleria del Milione in Milan (1930). Began to make abstract sculptures and ceramics and became with Licini, Melotti and others a leading figure in the Italian abstract movement. Spent 1939-47 in the Argentine, working part of the time in a figurative style, but in 1946 helped to found the avant-garde Altainira Academy at Buenos Aires, his ideas about the need for new art to express the modern world leading to the publication of the Manifiesto Blanco. In his continuous evolution, the artist continued to incorporate into his style characteristics that belonged to other artistic currents, such as the Baroque: in his personal opinion, in Baroque works, the figures seemed to leave the composition and venture outside it, continuing into space. Fontana returned to Milan in 1947 and shortly afterward issued the first Manifesto Spaziale. The Spazialismo movement founded by him was joined by Capogrossi, Crippa, Dova, Peverelli and other young artists. This movement was characterized by the overcoming of the conception of the canvas, losing its traditional role, with the presence of bulges and cuts. In this way the canvas lost its two-dimensional character and gained three-dimensionality, finally coming into direct contact with the real world. His canvases were characterized by monochrome and the replacement of the traditional brush with unconventional tools such as knives, razors and similar objects. As this was an easily replicable gesture, the artist, to distinguish his works from those of imitators, placed nonsense phrases behind each of his works, apparently attributable only to him. The artist also explored the architecture field and carried out various decorative projects for buildings, including ceilings using neon. Died at Comabbio (Varese), shortly after moving there from Milan.
Among his solo and group exhibitions, we can mention: first solo exhibition (Galleria del Milione, Milano, 1930); Biennale di Venezia (Venice, 1930, 1950, 1958); Twentieth-Century Italian Art (MoMA, New York, 1949); Triennale di Milano (Milan, 1951); Arte Spaziale (Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, 1952); solo exhibition (Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, 1959); solo exhibition (Mc Roberts & Tunnard, London, 1960); first US solo exhibition (Martha Jackson Gallery, New York 1961).
