Collection: Fontana Lucio

(Rosary of Santa Fe 1899 - Comabbio 1968)

Painter, ceramist and sculptor, Lucio Fontana is the founder of the Italian abstract group, famous as the artist who cuts his canvases with a knife stroke with the aim of “opening up the space”. In his works he explores all aspects of matter to arrive at a purified art.
From 1939 to 1945 he took refuge in Buenos Aires and launched an “artistic protest” against the war. After the Second World War, he imposed himself with a decisive gesture that scratches, perforates, holes and sometimes tears the space of the canvas or paper.
In 1946 with the White Manifesto he announces the end of the painted canvas and the affirmation of a more mobile and dynamic art. The following year he publishes the Space Manifesto ; he announces the end of art, paints interstellar abstractions and creates monochromes.
In 1960 he returned to simple forms, painted or sculpted.
The gallery contains some of his original color silkscreen prints from two series. Those from the “Teatrini” series are composed of two sheets, one of which, irregularly shaped, acts as a stage backdrop and is superimposed on another die-cut sheet with small holes arranged in various ways on the page. Some works from the “Concetti spaziale” series have die-cut holes, others are printed on a transparent acetate sheet.