ART-PREVIEW:Lucio Fontana-On the Threshold
Lucio Fontana dedicated his entire career to investigating the concepts of space, light, the void and the cosmos through the use of the most varied materials amongst which ceramic, plaster, cement and paint. He extended the boundaries of art through an awareness of new technology, such as neon and UV light, and new media such as television.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art Archive
The retrospective “On the Threshold” is the first retrospective of Lucio Fontana in the United States in more than 40 years, it reassesses the legacy of this key postwar figure through a selection of sculptures, ceramics, paintings, drawings, and environments made between 1931 and 1968. The retrospective also explores Fontana’s beginnings as a sculptor and his pioneering work with environments, contextualizing the radical nature of the Cuts within his broader practice. Born in Rosario de Santa Fé, Argentina, in 1899, from Milanese parents, Lucio Fontana spent his childhood between the two continents, before settling in his parent’s hometown in 1927. His early works were made of terracotta, inspired by his father’s practice as a sculptor. Both figurative and abstract, these pieces ground the artist’s practice in sculpture and tri-dimensionality. The founder of Spatialism and one of the most innovative artists of the 20th Century, Lucio Fontana is widely known for a series of slashed paintings from 1958 known as the “Tagli”, that became symbols of the postwar era. Though known primarily as a painter, he was well into his career when, in 1949, he used a canvas for the first time. The exhibition present examples of his first series of perforated paintings titled “Buchi” as well as paintings loaded with heavy impasto or incrusted with Murano glass that preceded the “Tagli”. The exhibition unpacks Fontana’s approach to painting by reevaluating his work in sculpture and decorative arts. His early career was marked by a period of fertile experimentation, whether challenging sculptural norms in Italy by using clay or actively participating in the Argentine Avant-Garde, Fontana’s early work from the 1930s and 1940s point toward the transgressive nature of his slashes two decades later. In 1940, he fled the war in Europe and returned to Argentina. There, with Jorge Romero Brest and Jorge Larco, he founded the Altamira art school in Buenos Aires, and with his students published the 1946 “Manifiesto Blanco”. This document forms the incipient manifestation of Fontana’s theory of Spatialism, which he would continue to develop upon his definitive return to Italy in 1947. He wanted to create an art in line with its epoch, embracing science and technology, and to uncover a new dimension of the flat surface: the space beyond the canvas. Having returned to Milan in 1947, he delved further into his Spatialist research, punching holes (buchi in Italian) into canvases, as an embodiment of space and a reminder of its infinite potential. In the early 1960s, Fontana fully embraced the monochrome, looking for purity and regularity in his work in order to overcome the chaos of Informal Art. Through Spatialism, Fontana pursued a synthesis of the arts, and his multidisciplinary approach expanded the notion of the art experience to embrace the surrounding space. He was a pioneer of environments, what he called “Ambienti” and his experiments with light and space, including his use of neon, set the course for exciting future developments in environments and installation art. The exhibition include the reconstruction of the artist’s monumental neon arabesque “Neon Structure for the Ninth Milan Triennial” (1951) as well as two immersive installations never before presented in United states “Spatial Environment – Utopias” at the Thirteen Milan Triennial (1964) and “Spatial Environment in Red Light” (1967). To coincide with the exhibition at The Met Breuer, El Museo del Barrio presents Fontana’s last environment “Spatial Environment” at Documenta 4, in Kassel (1968).
Info: Curator: Iria Candela, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, New York, Duration: 23/1-14/4/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu & Sun 10:00-17:30, Fri-Sat 10:00-21:00, www.metmuseum.org and El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street, New York, Duration 23/1-14/4/19, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 11:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-17:00, www.elmuseo.org
